


Dragons Annihilated

by Anonymous



Series: Blood of the Dragon [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Character Study, Dragons, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Gen, Shapeshifting, The Dance of the Dragons | Aegon II Targaryen v. Rhaenyra Targaryen Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22206538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: In a world where the dragonlords of House Targaryen are dragons in truth, a civil war is no less bloody.Or: a series where the dragon riders of the Dance were dragons themselves, and no less merciful for it.
Relationships: Aegon II Targaryen/Helaena Targaryen, Baela Targaryen/Jacaerys Velaryon, Corlys Velaryon/Rhaenys Targaryen (Daughter of Aemon), Daemon Targaryen/Laena Velaryon, Daemon Targaryen/Rhaenyra Targaryen, Nettles "Netty"/Daemon Targaryen
Series: Blood of the Dragon [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1371580
Comments: 64
Kudos: 45
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Little Lord Luke

**Author's Note:**

> dragon rider = dragon
> 
> This is part three in a series that has previously covered the Conquest and the golden age of the Targaryens. Broad strokes are still the same per the beginning of the Dance, but some Targaryens being literal shape-shifting lizards have changed things. Like Aerea surviving to become the Cannibal and Alyssa Targaryen living a long and happy life as the house's scary, scary matriarch.
> 
> Some characters have lives that go more or less as canon. Others live a LOT longer or go out differently, as I sometimes conflate the fate of the rider with the dragon. That means some people in the Dance might die a lot differently than in canon. One or two canon survivors might not make it. One or two that didn't might come out happier for it.

Six years after losing her Laena and her Laenor so close together, Rhaenys Targaryen risks losing her husband. She has always known this day would one day come. Her Corlys is two years older than her own father. Even more significantly, for all the dragon in his blood, Corlys is still very much a man. He is vulnerable in a way dragons rarely are.

But today is not that day. Rhaenys guffaws in the face of the maester who dares deliver such dire news on her husband's state. "Please, maester," she murmurs, combing a hand through her love's sea foam hair. "A fever is nothing to fear. My Corlys is Rhaena's eldest son. A dragon queen's son can handle a little heat."

Corlys smiles wanly. "Indeed, good maester. I share a bed with a dragon queen of my own. She makes me far hotter than a little chill ever could."

All Corlys needs is rest and time. High Tide never gets damp like the old castle did, but the hearth still burns day and night to keep any draft far at bay. When she can Rhaenys spends hours at his side. Even in human form a dragon need not fear mundane sickness. They wile away the tedium of bed rest through their favorite arguments and all the strange games Corlys had brought back in his travels. Often they are not alone. Corlys has had a page the past two years, after all, one rather more important than all the others before.

When Corlys sleeps, Rhaenys turns her attention to Driftmark. After decades as its lady running the isle is second nature. She was reared to one day rule as queen in her own right, before her own gods damned grandfather robbed that of her.

Rhaenys never sits court alone. One always needs a page to escort visitors, to fetch messages and pour goblets. And what a sharp boy he is. He anticipates her needs and comes forward with the pitcher or the letters before Rhaenys can think to ask for them. In Corlys' illness the lad is a constant fixture at her side.

A day after Corlys suffers yet another irritating setback in his recovery, High Tide receives a visitor that thinks he can worm his way under a dragon's nose and into the lord's sick chambers. But the castle is a tight-run ship. Its rulers can't abide anything else. Before the visitor can disturb Corlys the guards gracefully redirect him elsewhere. The dutiful page promptly delivers the poor, lost lordling to his proper place.

"Ser Vaemond Velaryon," her page announces.

Rhaenys quirks her lips upward. "Thank you, Lucerys, that will be all for now."

Her grandson bows and takes his leave. Her nephew is an annoyance not so easily disposed of. Princess Rhaena had foolishly thought younger sons might be a balm upon her heart after the utter mess she made of raising Aerea. Aeron and Mathos are both dead now, but their spawn live on to spawn so many extraneous seahorses of their own.

"Aunt Rhaenys," Vaemond murmurs, bowing to her. It is a conceit she allowed long ago, back when she, as an unwitting only child, thought it darling to finally have good-nephews. "Please forgive my intrusion in these trying times. My sons and I pray to the Seven every night for my lord uncle."

"Nonsense, nephew," she demurs. "It's no trouble at all. So many of your cousins have already come by to offer their prayers and well wishes. Unfortunately my Corlys is still recovering from his fever, but he will be most overjoyed yet another nephew pays such concern for his health."

Sea-green eyes search her own. Vaemond doesn't flinch like so many courtiers inexperienced with the royal family. Her nephew has grown up surrounded by dragons. An aunt with eyes of molten red-gold, who flies on wings much the same, means nothing to him.

"I must admit, Aunt Rhaenys, I came to seek out my lord uncle to help ease concerns in my own heart." Vaemond steels his shoulders. "Concerns I and the majority of Driftmark have nursed the past six years."

Rhaenys smiles in gentle reassurance that belies her plate of shining red scales. Gowns are cumbersome things reserved for more formal situations. With her husband unable to rally his ships one Velaryon should be ready to protect the island, after all. "Why, dear nephew, there is nothing to fear. My dear Corlys will recover any day now. Furthermore, the Mother blessed us with five healthy grandchildren. Our succession is certain as the tide."

Vaemond freezes. "Prince Jacaerys is in direct line for the Iron Throne," he says carefully.

She cocks her head at him, like how a falcon considers a mouse. "Yes. This is why my eldest grandson remains on Dragonstone under the tutelage of his mother and her consort. Fortunately, nephew, Andal law is clear in a case of dual inheritance. While the Iron Throne is far more... ambiguous in its preferences, House Velaryon has been of the Faith for centuries, and our succession set in stone. My Laenor was blessed with three sons before the Stranger called his name. Lucerys was born Laenor's heir on Driftmark. He is now our direct heir, with Joffrey after him."

Vaemond stares at her in disbelief. The moments prolong into an uneasy silence, as he searches her face for something that simply is not there. Sweat breaks out beneath his fine, pale hair.

"There are rumors, my lady," he chokes out at last. "Most worrying rumors."

"Most unfounded rumors, as our king decreed six years ago." Rhaenys leans forward. "From this very hall, in fact. Do you remember that day, Vaemond, the one we granted your cousin to the gods?"

"I-I do, my lady."

"What a dark day that was, for me and Corlys, to burn our babe so soon after our Laena. But the gods also smiled upon us that day, did they not? Four dragons finding their fire in one day is a feat surely not seen since before the Doom."

"A remarkable feat, my lady."

Rhaenys taps her chin with a thoughtful nail, its end black and tipped. The damn things are a pain to trim back anymore. "Do you also happen to remember the little... _misunderstanding_ Prince Aemond shared, to spark such a fire in my grandsons?"

Vaemond pales the color of his hair. "...Yes, my lady."

"King Viserys was most decisive in his judgement for further transgressions on that subject, was he not?" Rhaenys bares her teeth in a dragon's smile. "My royal cousin and I are of two very different hearts, but our grandchildren are always a sentiment we can very much agree upon."

Her nephew trembles. For his drop of dragon blood he is very much a floppy fish.

"In ten years time, nephew, the realm might be blessed with a second house of dragonlords. The world has not seen two unique branches of such since the Doom. Perhaps it is time our trading partners in Essos realize all the incredible opportunities to open to our house, when we have a dragon as lord and count a dragon king as brother."

"...Yes, my lady."

Within a week Vaemond and several of his cousins disembark for more fruitful opportunities in the Free Cities. If they are so anxious about the futures of their house perhaps it is time to more seriously invest in its future. Rhaenys hopes they have the good sense to stay there. Driftmark can only hold so many, after all, and dragons demand their space.

When Corlys recovers, he officially takes Lucerys on as a squire. At ten he is just old enough to be trusted with flying Blackwater Bay in calm weather. Driftmark comes to see a lot of the blue dragon it will one day call its lord. Most have the reverence to cheer from beneath his shadow and call him Little Lord Luke, their Blue Prince, their Sea Dragon.

Rhaenys considers that the end of it. So long as Lucerys lives, Vaemond's ilk will find no foothold here.

* * *

From Dragonstone Luke flies directly to Storm's End, where his grandmother's relations will receive him warmly. Per his mother's paranoia, he rests only in quiet woods or islets far away from human settles. He did swear on the _Seven-Pointed Star_ to not take any part in fighting. Luke isn't about to go breaking his sacred word on his first real mission. He's the future Prince of Driftmark, for fuck's sake. If he's to one day be trusted with his grandparents' legacy then he must handle this like a dragon prince should.

As Prince of Dragonstone Jace gets to fly out to the Vale and north. Luke's task could have been done by his grandmother, but he's served under her and Grandfather for years. Now is his time to prove they've raised a capable successor.

From a distance the colossal tower of Storm's End veers into the sky like some colossal stony fist throwing a challenge to the gods above. Luke could very easily land within its walls. Courtesy instead makes him set down outside to properly seek guest right.

His nostrils flare at the stench of another dragon, older and masculine. His snout throbs in memory of broken bones. His tongue grows heavy as it recalls when it first tasted blood.

_Aemond._

Luke's wings madly twitch to flee. He growls with the urge to bellow out a rematch.

_Your oath, dammit. Your oath._

Luke swallows his fear and his hate. In a wash of blue-green flame he stands a human prince, clad in only mail sewn from his own shed scales. Only that and Valyrian steel can survive the rigors of transformation. Only then does he bend for his mother's letter, carefully placed out of the fire's range.

Luke strides into a Round Hall already hostile to him. Aemond One-Eye sprawls out like a guest of honor. His face twists into a sneer made especially ugly by his gaping eye socket. At court Aemond wears a sapphire in the socket. On the wing he has no such luxury.

"Little Luke Strong," he calls out jovially. "And here I thought your bitch of a mother had you all locked down on Dragonstone!"

Luke ignores him. He delivers his letter to Lord Borros and does his fucking duty.

Faintly he hopes the sight of the royal seal, Rhaenyra's imploring of their shared blood and common history, will remind Lord Borros of his solemn duties. Instead the Lord of Storm's End takes one look at the letter and pawns it off on a page. As the boy swiftly reads words intended for Borros alone that stormlord's eyes never leave Luke. They size him up like Grandfather would a prize ship.

Luke squares his shoulders. This time he is not a boy of five, Aemond a boy twice his age and twice his weight. He is a strapping squire well skilled in arms. Aemond might be a man grown, but now he is near his equal in height. At least in the forms of their birth.

"Prince Aemond has generously offered to take one of my girls to wife. And yet, you are in direct line for Driftmark and all its wealth, and he is a third son." Aemond snarls, but scrupulous blue eyes ignore him entirely. "Which of my lovely daughters would you take, boy? Each is a beauty beyond compare."

Luke's gaze momentarily strays to the ladies, all black-haired and blue-eyed. His heart twists guiltily for his betrothed. "Lord Borros, I have been betrothed to my cousin Rhaena for ten years now. My brother Joffrey-"

"Bah!" the stormlord spat. "A third son in line to nothing."

Luke inhales deeply, and reaches for calm. He is the heir of the Sea Snake. He knows how to do more than burn. "Jacaerys and I are both without issue of our own. Joffrey might be considered both of our heirs." Unlike Aemond, with two nephews by his siblings. Little Jaehaerys has already proved himself a dragon. Borros' eyes go shrewd. "I am but a loyal son, Lord Borros. It is not my place to offer the hand of my brother, or renegotiate my own betrothal. Those are terms my royal mother and grandmother have more terms in. But we considered you close kin to us already, a stalwart ally that did not need to be bought."

Lord Borros flushes with fury before he pales at memory of his royal cousin. Rhaenys Targaryen is the oldest dragon alive. She has been so since the Dragon Mother's death near a decade ago. They call her the Red Queen by virtue of her size and the title that should have been lawfully hers. The Bloodwyrm, Luke's stepfather, is not much smaller.

Aemond snarls, toppling his chair as he rises. "Please, good-father, let this drivel end. All the dowry I need comes from you, little bastard. You still owe me a fucking eye!"

"Enough!" Borros Baratheon thunders. "You are both my guests, protected under god given rights. There will be slaying each other beneath my halls."

Only then does someone remember to offer bread and salt Luke's way. He viciously rips off a hunk. "I came as an envoy, not a knight. Or a merchant."

Borros Baratheon might consider reading beneath him, but every lord worth his salt should know his numbers. Aegon's faction counts four dragons of fighting age, if one generously includes sweet Helaena. On their own Grandmother and Daemon are twice the size of each. Mother herself is of formidable size, and her two eldest almost of age for combat. He is also Grandmother's cousin, his relation to Aegon's side far more spurious.

Luke does not linger long. He wolfs down his meal and stalks off to his chambers. Lord Borros has already thoroughly sickened him tonight. He does not need his uncle or the hungry gazes of the Four Storms to rile him any further.

He does not imagine Mother and Grandmother will have much kindness left for their kin, when they discover his greed.

Upon reaching his chambers Luke raps a fist against every wall. Unlike the riddled walls of the Red Keep, all are strong and solid stone without a single secret passage between them. For good measure he drags a heavy wardrobe before the door. The last thing he needs is a bungled assassination attempt making him burn all of Storm's End down around his ears.

* * *

During the Last Storm the mighty castle that had never feared man nor god trembled in dread beneath the Silver Queen's shadow. Perhaps no wind might ever shake Storm's End from its precarious cliff. Elenei's enchantments had never extended to dragonfire. Now, over a hundred years later, Storm's End trembles beneath the vibrant wings of the Red Queen.

The stormfolk shudder when Rhaenys Targaryen shakes the air with her scream when she beholds the body washed up on on the shores of Shipbreaker Bay. She lands beside it, ignoring the white banner and the speakers long braced for her arrival. Her claw dismantles their attempt at a funeral pyre. Out tumbles her grandson, so small against her, so blue and so broken.

He stinks of brine and rot and dead fish. Still, beneath it all, he smells of Lucerys. Little Luke. Her heir. Her babe's babe. The fish and salt that gnawed away at him cannot disguise his injuries. It was no rush tide that gouged so deep into Luke's neck the bite near tore it off. It was no fish that gouged out his eyes before he even hit the water.

The babbling of the peacemakers is worth less than the buzzing of flies. Rhaenys drowns them out with a bellow that makes most soil themselves. She disdainfully turns her back to them. Tenderly she draws Lucerys up a final time as she arranges him into a coiled position more natural for his dragon body. Only then does she carefully build the pyre around him, as she had helped do for her two children before, and her own grandmother before them.

When she deems the work satisfied Rhaenys inhales deeply. Red-gold flames ignite the pyre. He soars home on the smoke. She waits hours, but she is a dragon full into her life, and her fire eats swiftly away at even dragonscale. When all that remains of her grandson is ashes she beats her wings, scattering him to the sea and all four corners of the wind.

She has heard the rumors. She has heard the excuses. Lucerys is still dead by Aemond's jaws, goaded out from the courtyard of Storm's End and a lethal battle above the bay. Perhaps Aemond had burned out his patience on his own. Perhaps Borros had sought to abet the older, stronger, madder dragon. By his attempts to court both sides, when his oaths had been obvious, Lucerys is dead all the same.

Rhaenys snorts disdainfully at Storm's End and sets the trampled banner of peace alight. She has seen to her dead. She has no purpose here, when her cowardly cousin has fled his home and her certain wrath.

Borros has proved himself a failure of his father's legacy. Perhaps Rhaenys might finally grant Storm's End a proper dragonlord when the time comes for a reckoning.

But not today, not without an army to hold all she might burn.

Her good-daughter, as always, has a more immediate solution for justice so bitterly saught.

If Aemond believes in an eye for an eye makes justice, than so shall a son for a son.

So do the dragons dance.

So do the dragons die.

All over Little Lord Luke.


	2. The Sacrificial Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Jaehaerys Targaryen, who came to be called the Sacrificial Dragon.

Only a year after her wedding to Aegon, Helaena goes into labor. All Helaena remembers is the excruciating fire down her middle and the bleary calls for her to push, ordered in High Valyrian. Her ears latch onto the sibilant tongue of the Freehold better. Mother combs her fingers through her hair and murmurs encouragements like she's a little girl in her sickbed again, before she'd found her wings and her will.

A woman's battleground is the birthing bed. For her babes, Helaena goes to war. The Stranger can't have her. He especially can't have her children.

Over her own shrieks and curses comes a new sound rise above the noise. That loud, angry squall is sweeter than any song.

More terrible than any sound is the utter lack of it from the squaller's twin.

Old Maester Mellos squints down at the second babe, pink but silent, turning it in his arms before slapping it on the back.

"Not to worry, princess," murmurs Paella as she wipes more sweat from her brow. "Your little girl's hearty and hale, a true dragon."

Paella soothes her in seedspeak, the rough Valyrian dialect of Driftmark and Dragonstone. Helaena lies back down in bed, losing the instinct to rip her babe from the maester's hands. The dragonseed have so many superstitions regarding their dragonlords. A loud crier is most certainly a dragon, for it has a dragon's lungs. Even more blessed an omen is a babe born pink and silent, for dragons do not weep.

Helaena is a dragon herself. She does not weep when she is helped to sit up and two wriggling bundles are placed into her arms. She leans in to smell their hair and marvel over the miracles she brought into the world.

Aegon, for all that he has turned up his nose at the birth of their baby brothers and later their nephews, is utterly enchanted by their own. He freezes like a statue when the larger babe, their son and heir, is placed into his arms.

"Don't worry, Egg," Helaena hides. "Your son won't bite. He has no teeth yet."

"I... He's so small, Laena."

"But large for a twin," Mother interjects fondly, "and he came out fighting."

Aegon tentatively holds out a finger for their son to grasp. He does so with his left hand, all six fingers wrapping around it.

"Jaehaerys is a good name, a wise name."

 _A king's name,_ Helaena thinks to herself.

Mother has always been so avid on Aegon's rights. But Egg doesn't have Father's patience or ability to sit court for hours on end without losing his temper. Rhaenyra, for all she is admittedly a bitch, runs Dragonstone personally.

Yet Jaehaerys is also the name of their great-grandfather, the Wise King they never had the chance to meet in person. How can a king so loved and long-lived not yet have a namesake among his descendants? They can name their little girl for the Good Queen, also lacking a proper namesake this generation, and ensure the Targaryens their second Jaehaerys and Alysanne.

"Jaehaera," Aegon blurts out. "Jaehaerys and Jaehaera."

"Egg," Helaena gasps at his innovation. "I love it!"

Mother's face twists, which only makes Helaena love the name more. Helaena might have been coaxed out of the decision for her own well-being, for the futures of her children, but any idea of Egg's is too precious to be simply dismissed.

Jaehaerys and Jaehaera are born together. One day they will learn to fly together and breathe their first flames, for Helaena knows they are dragons both. If the gods are kind, they might even one day marry and grow old together, to know only constant love and companionship until their dying days.

* * *

As far back as he can remember, Jae's memories are all of Haera. They share a crib and wooden teething toys, nursemaids and sessions with the septa. Papa carries them on his shoulders and Mama tucks them in at night. Grandmother teaches them about knights and ladies while Grandfather tells them stories of how his grandparents fought giants and wildlings beyond the Wall. Where Jae goes, Haera follows, and where Haera goes Jae goes. One can't divide them anymore than one can separate the Seven.

All the nursemaids love Jae. He's like Mama and Papa both in how he knows how to smile and jest just so to follow Haera into embroidery and let her swing swords with him. However, most look at Haera askance, when she does not laugh or cry like Jae does. They are too stupid to realize Jaehaera is _special,_ not strange.

But not the maids from Driftmark and Dragonstone, with silver streaks in their hair and eyes like amethysts. They know to respect Jaehaera as the dragon she is.

Despite his extra finger and toes Jae is very much an ordinary little boy. Haera is a dragon from the inside out. She doesn't giggle like a girl but smiles with her eyes, tilts her head just so. When Jae does something _really_ funny, like tipping that bucket of water all over Uncle Daeron, then Haera coughs low in her throat like Mama and Papa do in their dragon shapes. Neither do dragons cry. Instead Haera's face shutters close and her eyes burn like embers. Jae lets her hold his hand real tight so he can escape somewhere safer, a quiet place without whispers or watching eyes. Dragons need their space and the Red Keep has no shortage of secret places only they know.

Jae enjoys a lot of things, but he's happiest when his sister when his sister is happy. Above all else, Haera loves to fly. Grandfather is too old and fat to fly far. Papa takes the when he has the time. Mama is almost always their wings, who'll carry them up so high they can't smell the city, or out into the bay where everything smells like salt and ships pass by like little white dots. When the new babe prevents her from being a dragon at all they beg Uncle Daeron instead. They know to never, ever bother Uncle Aemond, but Uncle Daeron is young and fun, and they can coax him into twists and turns Mother would never do with them.

Once Maelor is finally born Mama can get back to flying them all again. Jae and Haera like their new brother well enough, but he's a babe that gurgles and crawls. Their best flights come when baby Maelor is left behind with Grandmother.

Inevitably, the day comes when Jae is no longer enough to keep Haera happy. She swats their best toys aside and refuses to pick up her own wooden sword.

"Fine," Jae sighs at last, when he's run out of ideas. "What _do_ you want, Haera?"

Haera's eyes, distant and dreamy, stare out past him to the balcony and the blue skies beyond.

"Oh," he whispers.

He snatches her hand like he can hold her down to earth. Haera's nails sink into his skin. Dragons are not to be denied.

Jae turns to Rielle Stokeworth, a sweet, vapid lady with no clue what is about to happen. He fears what might happen if she try to stands between his sister and the sky. "Lady Rielle?" He graces her with his best smile, the one he's learned from Grandfather. "Would you please bring down our knights?"

They are very fine knights, carved so finely they almost look real, and their armor gilded with real gold. It was a very fine gift from back when Jae and Haera were babes, now stored in a box on the highest shelf in their nursery and long gathering dust. Lady Rielle is new to court and doesn't know them like old Iona Celtigar did. She just smiles back and turns her back to them.

Haera sinks her nails in deep enough to draw blood. Jae lets her go with a pained hiss. She charges for the balcony.

With a hammering heart Jae stares after her. He suddenly thinks of Maelor, the bumbling baby always left behind. Jae will be just as useless, once Haera realizes she doesn't need Mama to fly.

_"Wait!"_

Jae doesn't shout out in either Common or Valyrian. In his panic all language escapes him, except the very first he learned, the one he and Haera perfected together. His wordless keen goes ignored. His twin doesn't flinch. She doesn't even glance his way.

Haera leaps.

Behind them Lady Rielle shrieks. By the time she races to the balcony Jae has already vaulted himself over. He squints his eyes shut as the yard below surges up to him. Despite that fire still sears against his closed eyelids and burns through every one of his limbs. Is this what breaking every bone in his body feels like, or is this dying?

Several seconds too late after he fell, Jae finally thuds down to earth. He lands in a heavy tangle of limbs, after smacking into _another_ pile of limbs.

Jae opens his eyes. Beyond the odd crispness to his sight, and the odd edges some colors have gained, is the strange mess of black wings and scales he's seem to have become lost in. In trying to scramble out he only hurts more. Including parts of him that hadn't existed up on the balcony.

 _"Oh,"_ he blurts out, only it sounds like a strangled cough in this deep, deep throat.

Beneath him Haera growls to let him know, in no uncertain terms, that he is an idiot.

Jae purrs back in dumb relief.

Once the commotion in the yard dies down, King's Landing crows about its prince and princess, who found their flames together and proved themselves true dragons.

Jae knows it's a lie. Haera leaped to claim the skies. He leaped out of sheer panic at being left behind. He'd have rather been a splatter on the stones than stare helplessly up as she soared triumphant and unreachable above him.

It's one more secret he and Haera keep to themselves. He's as much a dragon as she is now. He will be until their dying day. Their scales are matching black, though Haera's are trimmed in gold and Jae's in silver. Their eyes used to be matching violet. Now Haera's are a sunny gold like Papa's scales and Jae's a pale sky blue like Mama's. Coloring aside, they are identical in size and shape. They relish the courtiers' confusion in telling them apart.

Jaehaerys and Jaehaera are mirrors of each other, after all. All is as it should be.

* * *

Dragons are not made to be caged, even little dragons. Maegor's Holdfast might be a castle within a castle, but to Aegon the Elder's children it is a prison. They flutter restless circles around the parapets until their pleas at last wear down their father's resolve. The Holdfast might be the most fortified section of the castle, but all the Red Keep is his fucking domain. Fuck his mother's paranoia. He's not having his damned children climbing the walls like trapped rats.

Restless little dragons need the space of the Dragonmont, or at least the Dragonkeep. The Beast King constructed that monstrosity atop the Hill of Rhaenys so that even massive adult dragons might have a home in King's Landing. But the Dragonkeep's vast size degrades its security. Alyssa Targaryen, large enough to swallow her smaller grandchildren whole, has been dead for near a decade now. Jaehaerys and Jaehaera, even Helaena, would be dwarfed by such a space.

If Aegon can't trust his family across the city, then he can at least give his children the Red Keep. At this age they're the size of hounds. They can wrestle in the godswood or race each other around the towers to their heart's content.

A man history remembers only as Cheese has hunted rats through every gods forsaken nook and cranny of the Red Keep. His natural, healthy fear of dragons does not extend to pipsqueaks the size of dogs. Blood can probably pop the little bastards' heads right off.

Cheese's first plan to infiltrate the Queen Mother's quarters dies a quick death in his mind. The Queen is still a fucking dragon, even when shaped like a plump, tempting little bitch. Cheese does not trust cornered rats. He sure as fuck doesn't trust an enraged dragon mother to not bring down the entire fucking tower upon their heads.

With the younger whelp otherwise confined to the Holdfast, that leaves the older one, the heir. That will especially satisfy the White Worm.

From his vantage point in the shadows of the Tower of the Hand Cheese quickly realizes the place still works. The brats race themselves to exhaustion every evening, roosting on the parapets like overgrown bats. A few quick hacks with the sword and they can make off with the whelp's head before the guards think to check the secret passages that wind up the tower.

With a plan in mind, Blood and Cheese lie in wait. After hours the little bastards finally settle down in reach. In the dark it's impossible to tell which is the son. Blood shrugs and lunges after the closer one.

One whelp screams in pain and the other in surprise.

Then erupt flames of silver and gold, and the night descends into shrieks all around.

By the time the Kingsguard rally everything is over. One assassin, a large and hulking brute, lies dead in the yard. He is larger than the dragon who has fallen with him, jaws still stubbornly locked onto the man's shoulder. The surviving twin nudges desperately at their sibling, who does not move, before baring their fangs and spreading their wings wide in a threat display. The guards grant the little dragon a respectful berth. There is no saving the twin. The poor child lies limp, felled by the fall or the blade through their lower neck.

The surviving assassin is apprehended down in the tunnels. The guards need only follow the blood trail and the stench of burned flesh. Before the rat-catcher can succumb to his wounds and the interrogation, they wring enough of the truth out of him to uncover the culprit.

A son for a son, indeed. The butcher had hacked into Prince Jaehaerys by sheer, blind luck. It might have just as easily been the princess. Had the prince been but a few years older, closer in size to a horse than a hound, than he would have survived those first hacking blows. Together he and Jaehaera would have made short work of the assassins.

But Jaehaerys had been only a boy of six, innocent as the Maiden. Lucerys had been a squire willfully sent by his mother into courting danger.

Only when the mourning rites are given, and his son reduced to ashes scattered on the wind, does Aegon consider the only step forward.

Since... Since _that_ night he has not seen the human faces of his daughter or his sister-wife. Helaena looms too large for the Red Keep in her scales, especially when she demands Jaehaera and Maelor within her sight at all times. With no other option they have all been relocated to the Dragonkeep. There a fire-breathing mother might vigilantly watch her children and lay low any threat that dare look at them askance.

Aegon drains his flagon before addressing his small council. Wine is near the color of blood, but has a taste that lulls his inner dragon instead of stoking it. It is currently the only thing keeping him coherent enough for human form. He and Helaena can't both lose themselves to their scales, not if they still have two children to protect with all their lives and all their wits.

"If it's a war the bitch wants," he snarls, "it's a war the bitch gets."

She still has four children left to her, after all. Her two bastards allegedly sired by Laenor are near men grown. Their lives will make her and Aegon equal once more.


	3. The Red Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Rhaenys Targaryen, who died a Red Queen though she never ruled herself.

Rhaenys Targaryen is born a queen to be, firstborn child of Prince Aemon and Princess Jocelyn. Her hair is Baratheon black, but her eyes settle on pale violet, and in time blaze red-gold like her father's. She is purposefully named for the dragon queen that founded their dynasty. Should a brother be born, Rhaenys will never be usurped by him. Instead she will become his bride. Together they shall rule and keep the dragon blood pure as possible for another generation.

Not that there shall ever be such a brother. Officially Rhaenys remains an only child. The stunted, misborn things she calls her siblings are secrets hastily burned in Dragonstone's yard.

Rhaenys is a dragon in her own right, oldest and fiercest of her generation. She is all the heir Aemon needs. He and Jocelyn raise her as such. Dragonstone will be her own domain one day, and all the realm after that.

When the realm realizes no son shall ever be born to Prince Aemon, the ravens descend on Dragonstone. The announcement that Rhaenys has found her fire should stem the tide. It only opens the torrent into a flood. In the minds of a thousand ambitious lords a dragon princess is certain to one day sit the Iron Throne. They arrogantly think themselves or their sons, without a drop of dragon in their own veins, worthy suitors.

The greatest suitors, those too powerful to be politely declined by letter, are granted the honor of addressing Rhaenys herself. She receives them not as a girl garbed in black, but in dragon shape, tall enough to stare down the largest man and only growing larger by the year. When she is human, she wears no gowns, only plate stitched together from her own shed scales. Most men pale, suddenly remember their manners, and depart Dragonstone early due to urgent business that has suddenly come up. Their betrothal offers are quietly retracted.

Dragons wed dragons or at least close kin. Marrying beneath themselves smothers the spark in their blood. Of her grandparents' many children, only Uncle Baelon and Aunt Alyssa have produced sons. Neither are dragons themselves yet. Viserys is a chubby little boy three years her younger ruled by his mother and the wishes of others. Daemon is seven years younger and a brat to the core. For all Rhaenys adores her Uncle Boremund, his boys are all younger than her, and near insufferable as Daemon.

Beyond the line of the Wise King and the Good Queen, there is Queen Rhaena's. She had been a dragon in her own right. One daughter is a septa and another a feral beast, but by her third husband she left three sons behind. The younger two are married with their own sons now, all at least a decade younger.

But, as for the oldest...

When Rhaenys is fifteen and near a woman grown, she can wait no longer. Every year that passes without her future secure is another year that Grandfather might finally convince her parents to bind her to spineless Viserys after all. She joins him on his royal progress. Together the old Bronze King and the Red Princess fly side by side, so that all four of the Shield Islands might behold their old king and their future queen.

"Cousin Corlys," she declares on Greenshield. "I will have Cousin Corlys and no other."

Corlys Velaryon, only recently settled as Lord of Driftmark once his ancient grandsire had finally passed. Corlys, old enough to be her father and with a first wife long buried. Corlys, who has gazed upon horizons no other Westerosi has seen, who sails the seas as she does the skies. He is a sea dragon at heart, her cousin many times over.

Grandfather's brow furrows as he considers her ultimatum. Instinctively Rhaenys braces for a fight. Once Grandfather and Grandmother had helped push Aunt Rhaena's infant twin daughters by Aegon from the succession. Why should her grown sons prove any less of a threat?

Too late does Rhaeys remember Aunt Saera, still despised for how she had denied her sire's wishes of her.

"He is twenty years your senior, Rhaenys," the king reminds her.

"And I am larger than he shall ever be, Grandfather, no matter my shape." Rhaenys is a dragon ascending into her prime. Corlys Velaryon is not a tall man. As a woman she has inherited her mother's Baratheon height and broad shoulders. She stands half a head above him. "He is a bold man, Grandfather, but more importantly a loyal man. A dragon requires a capable consort. Few can claim his blood."

Grandfather smiles sadly. His older sister died a year before Rhaenys herself was born, laid low by the infection festering on the Cannibal's claws.

"Yes," he concedes. "And even fewer can claim his spirit." It is as much as he shall ever acknowledge Viserys and Daemon both falling short.

Before the announcement is formally declared, Grandmother too tries to take Rhaenys aside, as her parents have already done. On this Rhaenys will not be swayed. Corlys Velaryon is a man of impeccable wealth through his trading expeditions, with ties in Essos no other lord can claim. He will enforce the Iron Throne's power as Aunt Alyssa's whelps never shall. He is a proven ruler in his own right. Rhaenys can entrust him as regent when war or motherhood calls her elsewhere. Having grown up in the shadow of dragons, she can more importantly trust Corlys to know when to surrender the throne back to her.

Beyond all else, Corlys is _no_ grandson of Jaehaerys. His Targaryen blood comes from the female line. In the Andal right Rhaenys, and Rhaenys alone, will be queen. Corlys will be but a consort. Doubtless Alyssa would have never let Baelon settle for such for their sons.

Once the betrothal offer is made, Corlys of course needs little time to agree. The only manner that needs to be stipulated is the issue of inheritance. Andal law is clear on that. Their second son shall one day inherit Driftmark and the elder be crowned Prince of Dragonstone. Should they have only one son, then Driftmark will fall to their oldest daughter. Only in the case of a single child need Corlys' younger brothers be drawn into consideration.

Rhaenys does not claim her husband on Driftmark or on Dragonstone. For her both are but temporary seats. They are wed in King's Landing, the capital that will one day be hers. Their ceremony involves no wedding cloaks. It is simplest that way, when Rhaenys and Corlys are both of great houses with holdings to consider.

Outside the sept Rhaenys sheds her human skin and her constricting wedding gown. In a wash of red-gold flame she stands tall and proud as the Red Princess. Corlys, well-accustomed to clambering up the masts of great ships, has no trouble climbing astride her.

The dragonlords of old once flew their human brides around the Dragonmont and claimed them beneath the open sky, for men and gods alike to witness their consummation. It is a tradition that survives today, for though House Targaryen now worship the Seven they are still dragons, and dragons do not answer to the laws of men. Rhaenys carries Corlys seven times around the High Hills. Then she swoops out into the bay. She lands on a quiet, rocky isle where they can fuck with only seabirds and distant ships as witness.

After two years of marriage, of flying between Driftmark and Dragonstone for her dual duties, Rhaenys grudgingly decides to begin the tedious process of heir-making. Her grandparents are not getting any younger. Best she have two or three children while Corlys is spry enough to keep up with them. A decade from now she might be needed as the true Princess of Dragonstone and her parents installed on the Iron Throne.

Dragons are fire made flesh, but dragons only find their fire later in life. No child can be conceived in dragon form or carried through the flames of transformation. A woman might conceive after any drunken tumble. For a dragon mother creating a family is a conscious effort. A child requires sacrifice, vulnerability, and _patience._ Endless weeks of patience.

Making the damn babe is the least unpleasant part of the process. Afterward comes the wait; the wait for the moon blood that never comes, for the morning sickness to abate, for the gods damn babe to stop kicking her ribs already.

Long before Rhaenys reaches that part her pregnancy is an open secret across Blackwater Bay. Every dragonseed in the isles knows what is imminent when a female dragon stops flying. Still, before Father flies off to handle Tarth's piracy problem, they make a show of formally announcing her pregnancy and assuring the realm the succession is very much secure.

Rhaenys is going through the books on Driftmark, waiting for the babe to stop tumbling like a fucking mummer, when the raven arrives.

Suddenly that iron chain is broken. Father is dead, bled out from the arrow in his throat before he could even shift. He will never succeed Grandfather as king. Mother shall only ever be Queen Mother, not in her own right. Rhaenys is to be Princess of Dragonstone to the wrong fucking king.

She braces for the announcement before the babe even comes. She'll heave all over Corlys' finest ship or upon a relative's scales to get to King's Landing if she can't be crowned right on High Tide. As days crawl by Rhaenys surmises her grandparents want to mourn Aemon properly, to not declare a new formal heir until after the babe has come and their Red Princess has regained her wings.

But Grandfather cares not for the iron chain of succession. He does not break it further. He melts it down and forges it anew when he instead names Baelon as Prince of Dragonstone.

Rhaenys' bites back on her impulsive, fiery hatred. She inhales, slowly and patiently, and channels her frustration into piles of coldly written letters rather than frothing rage. Like seven hells is she losing the babe to Grandfather's pigheadedness, the only babe of hers Father will ever know of.

Even fat with child and without her wings, Rhaenys still has her defenders, Grandmother most ferocious of them. Those that won't speak for her directly still defend what they call her 'boy in the belly,' as if what's between the legs of Aemon's unborn grandchild matters more than the dragon daughter so callously denied. Doubtless these lords are without sons on their own, selfish enough to ensure their own blood shall one day succeed them, and not some thankless nephews. Gods forbid millennia of Andal precedent be thrown out the window alongside their princess.

The Good Queen and the Bronze King quarrel as they've never quarreled before. Rhaenys can only stew on Driftmark. She's already planned to name a son Aemon. Now she's only certain of it, to spitefully remind Jaehaerys of all he has robbed from the line of his beloved first son.

Instead the Mother refuses to honor Rhaenys' spite and grants her a girl.

"Laena," Corlys christens her. It is a name all her own, no matter the shades of Rhaena in there.

With her the last of Rhaenys' earnest support withers and dies. The realm that might have gone to war for Aemon Targaryen is utterly silent on Laena Velaryon. When the gods grant Rhaenys her son a year too late, she pointedly names him Laenor, for she loves him no more or no less than her beloved little girl.

After Laenor Rhaenys has no need for extraneous heirs. She spends days on the wing, reminding Driftmark's allies they are wed to dragons, and clawing back her own support inch by inch.

Nine years after her father's murder, the Stranger takes Uncle Baelon. This time Rhaenys is not fat and stranded. She flies to the Great Council on her own wings to assert her case by Andal law, to remind the realm the rights of the daughter come before the brother. She does not fly alone. Laena and Laenor, though both so young, are now dragons in their own right. They alight at her sides to remind the realm its future is already secure.

But Rhaenys is not the only mother come to defend the rights of her offspring. With old Jaehaerys senile and all but human these days, Alyssa Targaryen is the largest dragon left in the skies, excepting Rhaenys' mad good-sister. Rhaenys is the Red Princess, hewn from the image of the much loved Red Prince. Viserys and Daemon have inherited their mother's brutal bulk.

When the fickle lords cast their votes, Rhaenys is once more robbed of her birthright, and her children with her. Alyssa Targaryen becomes remembered as the Dragon Mother, matriarch of the royal line. Rhaenys is a Red Princess no longer. She is too old and hardened for such poetic sentiment. Now she is the Queen Who Never Was, and who never will be.

As always, the realm speaks too soon. The lords that overthrew ancient precedent for the rights of male heirs are left without any. Daemon has no children at all by Rhea Royce. Viserys is left with only Rhaenyra, after all the babes he put in Aemma until they ate her from the inside out. In spite he names her his heir, after Daemon dares mock poor, short-lived little Prince Baelon.

Viserys is a dragon, no matter a plump and lazy one. When he makes up his mind, his will is set in stone. Rhaenyra remains his heir after Alicent gives him sons. With his precious daughter in need of an unquestionable betrothed, one who is not her half-brother, there is only one true option.

Rhaenys will never rule as queen. One day, however, she might live to see the day Laenor makes her a Queen Mother. Her chances are fair. Viserys is only three years younger than her, fat and complacent despite his two rotten sons and his rotten court.

* * *

The realm does not speak of a Queen Who Never Was, not since the Dragon Mother passed of old age. One does not mock the first dragon of her generation, the largest left alive. King Viserys is slow and lumbering when he rarely takes to the air. The Cannibal is a monster never spotted past Dragonstone these days. Rhaenyra generously pays to keep the herds by her lair full and her children untroubled by the mad old man-eater.

Rhaenys Targaryen will never be Queen Mother. Her children are dead, for all her grandsons remain Rhaenyra's oldest heirs. Her black hair is streaked gray, her face lean as any veteran's, and her blazing eyes hard. Her scales remain vivid scarlet, her crest and claws like beaten copper. Her shadow would have enveloped King's Landing, had she ever deigned Viserys' court to be worth her time.

She is the Red Queen now, in size and age alone, truer than the Sun King and the Yellow Queen cursing each other across the bay. Perhaps Rhaenys is now in truth. She and Corlys command the strength and wealth of their family's cause. With Rhaenyra withdrawn in her grief over poor, innocent Luke, they now control the war council. They have long since buried their children. Losing but one grandson pales in comparison, when they have four more to fight for.

After nine days in despair, Lord Staunton knows his desperate raven answered at last by the shadow on the horizon. The besiegers outside his walls know dread.

It is not the Yellow Queen. It is not her husband the Bloodwyrm. It is the Red Queen, brilliant and terrible.

Ser Criston Cole's soldiers have scorpions and arrows to fire up at her. They die screaming in her flames.

They do not die in vain. From behind the lines appear salvation. Their Sun King shines like beaten gold and their Blue Prince like deep cobalt. Even Aemond One-Eye, ash-gray and with only one blazing eye, is a welcome sight.

Rhaenys rumbles but does not flee. One brother is easily broken between her jaws. Two make a match. But three...

The spectators a thousand feet below know Aemond to be Little Lord Luke's slayer. But the Red Queen cares not for vengeance, not when she has the cold cunning to shatter a rebellion.

Her jaws snap around King Aegon's neck. Daeron tears into her wing, to make himself the target. Aemond pumps his powerful wings to rise up above them all. With momentum he swoops down, digging his claws into the Red Queen's back and savaging her neck. Daeron shrieks in surprise and wheels away in time. His brothers are not so fortunate. Down they fall, entangled with Rhaenys.

Three dragons crash to earth. Only Aemond rises again, dazedly shaking his head but largely unharmed. He licks his bloody maw and considers the Red Queen's limp corpse in grim satisfaction.

His eldest brother moans, low and tortured, as he drags himself away from the carnage on one wing. The other half-hangs from his body. One foot he drags from a shattered hip. Half his golden scales are burnt and blistered. Daeron keens, rushing to his side.

As the older brother, Aemond leaves him to soothe Aegon. Aemond, the most senior prince left in his right mind, sees to the aftermath. Oh, the Red Queen gets her pyre, after he lets Ser Criston and his finest men skin choice pieces of hide. There is no armor like that made of dragonscale. Aemond rips off the head as a trophy to cart home. Mother and Helaena nearly lost Aegon today. He can at least provide proof the bitch that did this saw justice in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this verse Corlys and his brothers have Rhaena for a mother, and the Cannibal as a half-sister. Fun family.
> 
> Due to size differences here it takes two dragons to match Rhaenys and three young adults to tip the scales in their favor. As Daeron and Tessarion's whereabouts are unverified for Rook's Rest, I'm assuming they could be enlisted to help spring a trap on the blacks.
> 
> I've explored Rhaenys a lot through her children last fic and will continue to do so through the pasts of her grandchildren. Oddly when all's said and done the only parts left for her own chapter were the book-ends.


	4. The True Prince

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Jacaerys Velaryon, who carried the world on his shoulders.

Within weeks of her son becoming the Prince of Dragonstone in truth, Rhaenys learns she will become a grandmother. This grandchild will not only be her and Corlys' first, but in direct line for the Iron Throne. It was a right Rhaenys herself was denied when her father fell before his time, a right denied again when the realm crowned Baelon's boy over her. That is why she will forever be the Queen Who Never Was and why her Laenor must rule through right of Rhaenyra.

Rhaenyra, the future queen. Rhaenyra, her good-daughter. Rhaenyra, the mother of her grandchild.

Or so it is claimed. Her Corlys has long maintained eyes and ears on Dragonstone. It is one of Driftmark's greatest trading partners, the seat that should have been hers. Rhaenyra is well-loved on her isle, but Dragonstone has always adored its dragons. Almost all folk on the isle are dragonseeds, with the pale hair and blue eyes that show blood sewed on the wrong side of the sheets. Though he is Prince of Dragonstone now, their Laenor spends so much time in High Tide instead, for all he has a pregnant wife with only her retainers and sworn shield for companionship.

Rhaenyra has been a dragon since she was a girl of seven. She has the pride and short temper Rhaenys knows to expect from a dragon. She is one herself, after all, who spat a lot of her own wrath into the sea back in the day. For all he has taught his daughter to rule, Viserys has never quite succeeded in showing Rhaenyra those not of the blood aren't toys. She still keeps her favorites like little girls do dolls. Ser Harwin Strong has the place of honor by her side. Though he is heir to Harrenhal he has followed her all the way to Dragonstone as her protector.

"Rhaenyra is proud, love," Corlys murmurs to her, _"not_ self-destructive."

Rhaenys bares her teeth in a humorless smile. "For dragons those two are near one in the same."

Corlys knows that better than most. His own mother had neglected her Velaryon sons in the vain attempt to try coaxing her daughter back to some sense of humanity. Aerea had eventually killed her for it.

For now Rhaenys simmers in silent suspicion. Their spies have actually yet to catch their good-daughter in anything... untoward. Rhaenyra is their future queen. She'll reserve judgement.

When their grandchild's arrival grows imminent, Rhaenys and Corlys both fly for Dragonstone. Of course they are welcome there. Rhaenyra is their good-daughter and cousin to them both. In her belly ride hopes and dreams kindled with Prince Aemon's untimely death and Rhaenys' own slighted claims.

In time the child comes, furious squalls at last joining its mothers agonized roars. Even Rhaenys is barred from the birthing chamber. She waits outside with Corlys. Rhaenys growls restlessly when she hears the babe's gender. Laenor's son, an heir of Aemon's that will sit the throne in his own right.

 _If_ he is Laenor's.

Eventually a dragon can be denied no longer. Rhaenys strides into the birthing chamber with Corlys at her side. The old midwife, who had studied under the crone that had brought Rhaenys herself into this world as a future queen, skitters dutifully aside. Rhaenyra sits tall and proud bed with Ser Harwin at her side. The knight nurses scarring nail mark's from the queen's grip that will be his forever. Ser Harwin bows his head to them. The princess tilts her chin up, gold eyes bright.

Rhaenys ignores them to advance upon Laenor. His arms are fastened tight around the babe, mesmerized as only a new parent can be. She does not yet allow her heart to melt in tenderness.

"A grandson, I heard?" she murmurs, peering over his shoulder. She braces for brown hair, a tell-tale pug nose that could stand out on even a babe squashed from the birth.

The child has an unremarkable face for a babe, red and squashed as any. The thin slivers of his eyes are a lighter blue, one that might remain so instead of darken into brown. His wisps of hair are pale and fine as silk. Rhaenys exhales, a knot she has held for months finally uncoiling in her gut.

"Yes," Rhaenyra answers evenly. "Your grandson."

"Does he have a name, then?" Rhaenys retorts. Perhaps she has named him Baelon, for the grandfather that had gained Rhaenys' birthright. Or Jaehaerys, the senile fool who had robbed her of it.

"Joffrey," Laenor blurts out.

Silence falls hard over the room. Rhaenys and Rhaenyra stare each other down. Ser Harwin twitches but thinks better of whatever fool thought ran through his mind. Laenor, always unaware of the messes he makes, stares intently at the babe he has claimed as son.

"Jacaerys," Corlys rules at last, Valyrian to the core. "Jacaerys Velaryon. A wise choice, my boy. It's an old and venerable name."

"The name of a king," Rhaenyra insists. "One day he'll succeed me as a Targaryen."

Rhaenys swallows a scornful laugh. She and Corlys only exchange a neutral look.

Before the Conquest kings in Westeros came by the dozen. They had been men who claimed names like Mudd and Hoare. Thus far House Targaryen has only known five true kings. Not a single one were men. True Targaryens are dragons. Even Aegon the Uncrowned, that fool pretender, had finally found his own wings before the Beast King had ripped them from him beneath the Gods Eye. Even 'pure-blooded' dragons do not always bear such children. Alysanne and Jaehaerys had managed only four, out of thirteen children.

 _Gods willing,_ Rhaenys thinks to say.

Instead she remains silent. It is unbecoming of her station to lower herself with lies.

In time Lucerys and Joffrey are born, Valyrian as their brother. Rhaenys comes to love them all, her Jace and her Luke and her Joff. She never feels truly certain they are _hers._ Laenor adores them and they idolize him in return. Luke most especially tries to copy his graceful smiles, his gentle poise, his elegant strokes of the blade with his wooden stick. Gods help her, she still can't see Laenor in them like she can Laena in the twins.

And then Rhaenys is left childless, Laena lost to her grief and Laenor to Qarl fucking Correy. She is a ghost for her babe's funeral, hanging on just to see Laenor's ashes scattered to the winds, like Laena before him.

Only then, when she is at her darkest, does she find fire after all.

On the day of they are to burn their son, Rhaenys and Corlys awake to shrieking in the courtyard. By the time they race outside Alyssa Targaryen has already separated the offenders like a mother cat would squabbling kittens, using her wide wings to sweep them to opposite sides. Three hound-sized dragons lay in a hissing tumble, spitting sparks. The other is horse sized, snarling against the Dragon Mother's hold, with blood weeping from one eye socket. Queen Alicent, who is always so pleased when her babes prove themselves dragons, screams at Aemond's state.

Despite the chaos, the accusations Alicent and Rhaenyra hurl at each other when their sons are unable to speak, Rhaenys laughs. Laughs until she damn near sobs. It's absurd. It's a mess. It's a gods damned miracle.

All three of Laenor's boys, finding their fire on the day they must bid him farewell? Of course they're his. How ever could she have doubted it?

Within several days the princes are calm enough to be coaxed back into human form. The truth comes out in spurts. Rhaenys hears it all. She is their hostess and grandmother to three of the dragons in question. Her rage grows with her pride.

Of course Alicent's little brat is all to blame. Joff had caught Aemond trying to climb the towers and been near pushed off for his trouble. Jace and Luke had leaped for their brother's defense. Gods damn Daemon for gifting Jace live steel. If that dagger had gone any deeper into Aemond's eye, Alicent might have been nursing a drooling fool the rest of her days, had she still a child to nurse.

Gods damn Aemond for calling the boys Strongs and gods damn Aegon for passing down his mother's poison to his brothers. Most especially damn the whispers on Dragonstone that had taught Jace to burn at the word. Corlys runs a tight ship on Driftmark. So many smear campaigns drown a swift death in their harbors.

"Enough," Viserys stonily rules at long last. "I shall hear no more and I shall put out no eyes. We dragons are hot-blooded and today has proved my son and grandsons all true to the blood. But cooler heads shall prevail. Their heritage obviously speaks for itself." His blazing violet eyes sweep High Tide. "If anyone, man or woman or child, noble or common or royal, ever dares to again insinuate my grandsons are anything less than legitimate, then they shall know a dragon's wrath."

At last, Rhaenys and her king agree on something. The royal family sails for King's Landing. When they are in control enough of their fire, Rhaenyra sails her brood back to Dragonstone. It will be several years before they are old enough to soar across the channel on their own. Corlys' little snakes ensure to spread the moniker of _True Prince_ far and wide, for Jace is trueborn and true in heart, unlike the selfish whore-monger and mad animal Rhaenyra calls her oldest brothers. Such should be an end to things.

* * *

"Y-You _coward._ You utter, fucking coward. If you had bother to gone with her then-"

"Grandfather," Jace rasps out at last. _"Enough."_

Wonder of wonder, Corlys Velaryon listens. His sea-green eyes search Jace's face desperately, as if just remembering Grandmother loves on through him, just as she does through Joff and Rhaena and Baela. Mother exhales deeply, some of the dangerous red draining from her face. She hasn't been in control of herself since Luke...

Jace sighs as a sudden wave of weariness washes over him. He is not quite sixteen, not yet truly a man grown. With Daemon off on campaign, rule should fall completely on Mother, or Grandfather. Why the fuck does he feel like the parent in this situation, when his heart still bleeds for Luke?

"Well, Jace?" Grandfather manages. "Were Rhaenyra not your mother, I'd pull us all out from this madness, and disavow her. Now we're in this to the bitter end."

Jace inhales. Luke had been the closest grandchild to his grandparents, their heir. Now he is dead, Joff's position still unofficial. "It is high time my mother exercised her full authority to appoint a Hand of the Queen, Grandfather. It must be you."

Not Daemon, who Grandfather has despised since flying off with Aunt Laena, for daring to worm his way into Papa's bed so soon after his death. Jace cannot hate his stepfather, not when his cousins and little brothers love him so, but Daemon is off burning his way through the riverlands. At home their ship needs a steady hand. There is no one more experienced, more worthy, than Corlys Velaryon. He would have been Grandmother's royal consort once, had life gone differently.

Mother's golden eyes stare silently at him. But Jace is her firstborn, her oldest son. Mother, who went to war for their rights, only bows her head in quiet concession.

If Grandfather is now Mother's Hand, then Jace must become their head and their voice. It is he who marshals their armies across Westeros when they butt heads and deadlock troop movements once more.

When the pressure grows too heavy, and the walls too confining, Jace sheds human words and worries to circle the isles. Sometimes the Cannibal rumbles grouchily after him. The feral old bitch is too large and sore to bother chasing after dragons these days. So instead of warily eyeing the Dragonmont he instead turns his gaze downward. He knows every native soul on Driftmark and Dragonstone. They are the ones with silver-gold hair, so bright among the dark or exotic styles of the sailors in port.

Most are his cousins, to some degree or another. The dragonlords of old had spread their seed far and wide. The people had eagerly embraced every drop of dragon blood. Hells, some might his uncles or his cousins. Maybe even his brothers. _Half-_ brothers, without the true bonds he shares with Egg and Serys.

"Mother," he asks one day. "How did you find your fire?"

"I..." Mother shakes her head, descending back into her stupor. "I don't remember, little dragon. I was a girl of seven. I-It was a lifetime ago. Two lifetimes ago, before..."

Jace kisses her brow and leaves her to fuss over little Viserys. His brothers are no better at answering. Egg, who has been a dragon not even two years, shrugs and mumbles an apology. Joff has even hazier memories of Papa's funeral than Jace himself does. He just remembers Aemond standing over Joff, ready to do something terrible, and the burning need to do _something._ By the time Jace came back to himself, his mouth had tasted of blood and smoke, and all parts of him had felt too long and unwieldy.

His options exhausted, he resorts to Baela. His betrothed snorts. "I got fucking tired of waiting."

"...For what?"

Baela rolls her eyes. "Jace, I didn't have my own wings until I was _thirteen._ You and your brothers got to grow up able to fly wherever you wanted. I had to beg my father and Grandmother for rides because you weren't trusted with me."

Jace tries to remember those days, back when Papa and Aunt Laena were still alive, when their days had consisted cheering their parents around the Dragonmont. He swallows thickly as he remembers Luke, his arms so firmly wrapped around his chest.

"To me, it was a lifetime ago. But not for you." Despite himself he laughs. "What a name day gift that must have been."

His betrothed smirks wanly. "One might say I made it happen."

"H-How-"

Pale green eyes blaze. "Some of us leap off towers to find our wings. Others get... _desperate._ We lose someone or on the verge of doing so. No matter what happens, we can't hesitate. Either you're a dragon or you're not. There is no middle ground."

Jace grits his teeth as he recalls her thirteenth name day. "They found you in the lower Dragonmont. Y-You said instinct brought you there, after-"

"Before, actually." Baela flashes her teeth. "You throw yourself from towers, Jace, not trees, if your body expects more than a broken bone. You can't just stick your hand in the fire. You need to walk into a volcano's heart unflinchingly, without ever thinking of ever seeing the sun again. Or maybe you just get into a fight with a boy twice your age, one that can easily shove you and both your little brothers from the tower."

He flinches at the memory of Aemond's agonized scream, the spurt of blood when Luke dug a dagger into his eye. Gods damn Daemon for thinking live steel a name day gift for boys so young. He recalls the utter _fury_ in that sound, the promise of fire. Jace had been prepared to do anything in that moment, to keep his little brother from burning.

"Dragons are fire made flesh, are we not? Why should we ever flinch away from it?"

Baela cants her head. "Aerion Targaryen tried what I did, before his father hauled him from the deep tunnels. All the burning in the world can't light a spark that isn't there. He died scarred and bitter. That could have been me that day. Or perhaps Father would have just stumbled across my smoking carcass after the fact."

"Yet the Conqueror and both of his sisters turned out to be dragons." Jace pauses. "How many bastards did Aerion sire past Orys? How many half-siblings did Aegon have that never knew they might fly like he could? What of their children, and their grandchildren?"

She laughs scornfully. "You expect _dragons_ among the dragonseed because one of their ancestors was a fucking whoremonger?"

"More than one, Baela. The dragonseed wed prefer silver hair and purple eyes in their partners. How many do you believe our grandfathers found among them?" He exhales. "Or our fathers?"

Papa had loved Jace, Luke, and Joff equally. His warmth had never extended to their mother, not in the same way.

Baela growls. "Seven fucking hells, Jace, we outnumber them! My father and your mother are still the oldest dragons alive. Helaena is too mad or too timid to fight if her children aren't actively threatened. You and I can match the princes, and-"

"And what?" he snarls. "Joff and Egg put us over? We can send them up against Jaehaera or Daeron?"

Jace will gladly sacrifice himself, to save all his family. It is what big brothers do. He will risk the same of Daemon's life, for the Bloodwyrm is his great-uncle and one of the most vicious fighters alive. He could never ask the same of his mother, or his brothers, or especially Baela. Marriages and babes are dreams for springs. War demands all dragons fighting fit, should the worst come. Baela needs her wings, not a cumbersome child to weigh her down. Rhaena's pregnancy with her twins had cost her and Aegon the Uncrowned their chance at the throne.

He and Baela storm away from each other. Jace needs his space and time to convince Mother of his plan.

They are dragonlords. Nothing shall ever chance that. This is simply a chance to give their bastard relations a chance to prove themselves. Should they survive Aegon's rebellion, then they are dragons in their own right, with lands and a marriage to fit the title. Luke has no shortage of Velaryon cousins.

In the end Corlys needs more convincing than Mother. The queen sees the meaning in sending others out to risk their lives for vengeance and glory. There is a reason most lords choose to command from _behind_ their armies, should they deign take to the field themselves.

No one is forced to walk into the Dragonmont and face the dragons waiting to test them. They are all volunteers, offered the same risks and rewards as the other candidates. The blatant dangers are those only fools and dragons brave. And fools come by the dozens, ambitious lords wanting wings or illiterate fools a piece of glory.

Most have mundane hair and eyes, at best a single drop of dragon in their blood. Such is a case for both Ser Steffon Darklyn and Lord Gormon Massey. They die screaming. Silver Denys claims to be the son of Maegor himself. The man is at least a decade too young to be the Beast King's spawn. He badly singes his arm from Jace's flames and blindly rushes outside. The commotion he and his sons cause stirs the Cannibal from her slumber. By the time Mother and the Dragonguard ward her off she has eaten her fill of Maegor's son and grandsons.

But the gamble is not in vain. Hugh Hammer and Ulf the White are both built like brutes, the ideal warrior dragons. Nettles is at least young, spry, and so cunning she might have figured out the shift on her own. Jace does not remember her among the throng of candidates to face him.

And then there is Addam of Hull, of an age with Jace himself. His hair is white like sea foam, the same shade Grandfather shared with his children, and with the twins. Addam's first act as a dragon is to use his own wing to beat the flames off his little brother, Alyn, who is the age Luke had been. Jace understands that sentiment all too well. It is no mere coincidence that Addam's scales are a familiar pale silver-gray, his eyes such the same shade.

None of Laenor Velaryon's trueborn sons resemble him so strongly. Joff is a vivid red and Jace a deep yellow much like their mother's. Luke had been rich sapphire blue.

Jace embraces them both as brothers. He is gracious enough to convince Mother they deserve legitimization as Velaryons. Addam has certainly proved them the blood of Rhaena and Rhaenys both. They fall behind Joff, who Grandfather finally declares his formal heir. Perhaps Rhaena shall one day be his betrothed. With Luke's death still so fresh they need time to mourn properly. And to train those that will one day fight alongside them.

With more dragons on their side, some of Mother's possessive fear subsides. At last Jace can coax his youngest brothers from her side. Egg and Serys are safest aboard the _Gay Abandon,_ off to Essos and off from the war. With the Prince of Pentos they shall be safe for years to come. Their escort ships are more than enough against the haphazard ships Aegon the Pretender has in the narrow sea.

But neither he nor Grandfather anticipate the Triarchy. They do not realize what has befallen the _Gay Abandon_ until little Egg limps home to collapse upon the beach, belly full of arrows and gasping for breath. Little Viserys, without wings of his own, is presumed dead. He was seven years old.

Mother cannot be pulled from Egg's sickbed. She has no need to desert her last babe, so close to death. Jace shall avenge Viserys and teach the Triarchy the true meaning of fire and blood. He shall not deliver justice alone.

"For fuck's sake, Jacaerys!" Baela snarls before the eve of it all. "Serys and Egg are my little brothers too! You can't just fly off with the dragonseeds and leave me here!"

"I sail with Grandfather and his fleet below me, Baela, and with four dragons beside me." He bares his teeth. "It's high time to blood them."

"And it's not high fucking time I started protecting our people?" Baela bites back. "I should at least be on Driftmark, if Rhaenyra won't let Joff go and Addam goes with you!"

"What? You don't trust five dragons to do the Essosi like the Bronze King and his sons did against the Dornish?" That Dornish war had resulted in a whole fleet of ships burned by dragon-fire, without a single casualty on Jaehaerys' side. "Could you leave Rhaena and our brothers like that?"

"Can you just leave a battle ready dragon behind?"

Jace snatches her hands. "Seven fucking hells, Baela, Grandmother came back to us in pieces! I never got to say goodbye to Luke. We can't even fucking give Serys any sort of pyre. Do I need to lose you on top of everyone else?"

Baela seizes him by the shoulders and lunges forward. Jace instinctively opens his mouth to bite back. He freezes in utter bewilderment when she instead jams her tongue against her own. Out of some vague reflex he does his best to return it. Their nails claw at each other's dragonscale armor.

"You better fucking come back!" she growls. "If not I'm going to have to burn a whole fucking kingdom for you."

"I promise, Baela," he vows. "I'll make a queen of you yet."

Her eyes blaze at the empty promise. After a second's thought Jace rips his circlet of Valyrian steel from his head. He solemnly crowns Baela with it.

"You're marrying me the day you return a triumphant hero."

"Seven days after." Jace smiles wanly. "I'll need time to scrub the stink of Tyroshi from my scales."

Seven days to deliver bloody justice and see Viserys honored as best they can, before they finally start planning for the future.

"Promise me, you idiot."

"I promise, Baela."

Somehow or someway, he'll make a queen of her. Joff is still his heir and not yet with a bride. She does need him to show the world she is all her mother's dauntless courage, her father's ambition, with a fire all her own.

* * *

Addam and Alyn grew up nurtured on the stories of the great battles at sea, daring traps against pirates and whole Dornish fleets burned by dragon-fire. Grizzled veterans of the great campaigns fill every tavern with their stories. As boys they reenacted such glories by smashing wooden ships together. Now Addam soars on his own wings, with the True Prince himself as his commander, and the Sea Snake controlling the fleet below.

The Essosi fleet is beautiful in its own exotic way, ninety warships from three different Free Cities sailing through the Gullet.

Prince Jacaerys bellows the deep, throaty call meant to rally dragons. Ulf and Hugh drop down like vultures while Nettles hangs cautiously back behind them. Addam has king's blood through his veins, is a dragon in his own right. Though he is only the prince's size he dives fearlessly. He aims for the mast of a ship. On his first strike his flames lance harmlessly out to sea. On the second try blue-white flames spark and spread down the waterproofed mast like the ship is kindling.

Soon the sea stops smelling of salt. The air hangs heavy with smoke and scorched flesh. Addam's stomach heaves. He vomits onto the screaming crews below. When his stomach runs dry his body defaults to fire. He flies frantically further into the Essosi ships, to not consume his Lord Corlys in the inferno. Screaming sailors with burning hair and burning clothes leap into the sea to escape the hell to meet the ruthless tide and a barrage of Velaryon arrows.

It's a bloodbath.

It's a bloodbath they're winning. All for Prince Viserys, half-brother to Addam's own royal half-brother. He glances toward Prince Jacaerys in belief that they share any blood at all, much less a house.

The Bold Prince's blue wings flare recklessly low, low enough to scrape the surf. Dangerously so. Low enough for arrows to assail his eyes and wings. A grappling hook rends itself into his soft wing membranes. Prince Jacaerys careens into a burning mast. Addam shrieks with him as he and the galley both go under.

Ulf and Hugh stare stupidly in their prince's direction. Nettles has the sense to streak across the Gullet. Addam pumps his wings, as he imagines Alyn beneath that water, ignoring the arrows that sting along his face.

For a moment the sea pulses brilliant blue. Addam's keen dragon eyes spot a smaller shape kick its way to the surface. That drenched silver hair and blue armor is impossible to miss. Gasping and bloody, Prince Jacaerys clings to a piece of smoldering wreckage. He and Addam lock eyes. Addam is close and swooping closer.

Addam loses track of the Myrish crossbow bolts it takes to sink the prince back under the waves. All he sees is the blood his brother coughs upon the waters.

He shrikes his rage and his grief and denial. He burns every ship in the vicinity. In his zeal the flames spread from a Tyroshi galley to a Velaryon ship. The men jump into the bloody, frothing seas below. Addam does not move to help them. He circles where Prince Jacaerys sank, ready to snatch him up when he resurfaces.

Prince Jacaerys never does.

Sixty-two Triarchy warships burn. It only costs them a third of the Velaryon fleet, High Tide, and their crown prince.

Queen Rhaenyra abandons Prince Aegon's sickbed only to search the sea of wrecks and bloated bodies for her firstborn. Prince Jacaerys' body is never recovered. Instead they burn an older set of his armor, stitched from his shed scales and long outgrown. Custom demands every dragon participate in the scattering of the ashes, but Addam and the dragonseeds aren't true family at all.

When their queen snaps at them to keep their distance, Addam obeys. Instead he and Alyn quietly watch from town as the queen and Prince Joffrey and Lady Baela fly alone, to set their prince's spirit free upon the wind.

"He was our brother," Alyn mumbles. "And I didn't exchange ten words with him."

Addam drapes an arm over his shoulder. "Half-brother," he reminds him. "Trueborn and royal. It... wasn't our place to know him."

"It's because of him you have a place at all."

Addam bites his tongue hard enough to bleed. The blue flames in Dragonstone's deep bowels had granted him wings and flame, the ability to kill as no mere man could. It had proven them Ser Laenor's sons and earned them Lord Corlys' recognition. Alyn has only burns and scars in Prince Jacaerys' memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to the inheritance of dragon blood and pressure being higher on her, Rhaenyra was more discrete with her affairs here. All of her sons look unambiguously Valyrian. Of course, given Dragonstone already used to its dragonlords taking certain liberties... Well, jury's still out on any of Laenor's sons were actually his biologically.


	5. The Mad Mother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Helaena Targaryen, called the Mad Mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helaena, for all she could be a saner foil to Rhaenyra, goes mad with Jae's death and dies without any agency in canon. Hell, she probably got murdered to help spark the riots that led to the Storming of the Dragonpit.
> 
> Yeah. That ain't gonna fly here.

Helaena is born a plump and agreeable babe, all of her father's sweetness without his wilfulness. Or so those that know her superficially come to believe. Alicent knows her daughter better. Viserys thunders when people try to sway a mind made up. Helaena has a dragon's will and a maiden's grace. She wears away at people's resolve through sweetness and courtesies, implacable as the tide. This is how she convinces every maid to sneak her extra sweets or let her walk among the smallfolk.

Viserys is pleasantly surprised the day their daughter finds her wings. Her brothers are stunned. Rhaenyra seethes. Only Alicent seems to have anticipated the powder blue dragon that rounds out their family.

When feeling benevolent, Viserys circles the city so that every one may marvel at their Gilded King, whose violet scales are tipped in gold. Helaena dances for them, whirling above her crowds to delight in their cheers, and break up the monotony of their days. For a princess Helaena dresses simply. The more elaborate gowns and jewels gifted to her are sold. Their proceeds fund charities and motherhouses across the city.

The day Helaena and Aegon are married, King's Landing cheers their Sun Prince and their Sky Princess. They are dragons, yes, but of Hightower blood, connected to the Faith in a way Rhaenyra and her sword-swallowing husband can never be. Aegon is the Warrior made flesh. Helaena has the Maiden's grace and the Mother's patience.

A day after her father is found dead, Helaena accepts her crown with queenly grace. Her silver eyes stare knowingly, even accusingly, into Alicent's own. But she is a dutiful daughter, a wife and mother, and noble to the core. Helaena takes Aegon's hand. Together they present a united front, true monarchs. They are the shields between the realm and Daemon's spite. Most importantly of all, they are all that stand between their children and a jealous dragon that has always wished them dead.

The night Jae, innocent little Jae, is slaughtered in cold blood is the day their family dies. Helaena must be pried from the pyre so that her brothers can set it alight. When naught but ash remains she flies but once, skimming the Red Keep's towers. She drags Haera down with her at the end. Under her wide wings she shelters her children like a broody mother hen.

Helaena and Aegon do not share a bed anymore. They do not even share words. Alicent has not seen her daughter's human face since that terrible night. Nor has she seen Jaehaera's. It takes wine and whores to drag Aegon from his scales. He cannot move his wife and child to do the same. He cannot even pry Maelor away from his mother, who spits sparks at even Alicent when she gently tries to remove the poor boy from her presence.

The Red Keep cannot support an adult dragon. In the end Aegon wearily surrenders to relocating his whole family to the Dragonkeep. Only the oldest, most familiar servants and guards are allowed around Helaena. Her senses are especially keen as of late. Any unfamiliar sight or scent is bathed in dragonfire.

Alicent's bones shiver in the cavernous cold of the Dragonkeep or she sweats from her daughter's fiery presence. She is more a mother to Helaena's children than Helaena herself. Maelor is still but a babe. He needs a lap to sit on and human hands to help feed him. He needs words to keep him human and to lull him to sleep at night. Jaehaera prowls in Helaena's shadow, ripping off meat from carcasses cooked by her mother's flames.

At least the poor girl eats, for all her dreams are disturbed by nightmares. She wakes up shrieking in distress. Even at her little size only Helaena may safely soothe her. Helaena does not sleep at all. Her pale eyes blaze in the dark, fixating on her children should they so much as sigh in their sleep. She eats only when Jaehaera nuzzles part of a slaughtered cow toward her.

Alicent cannot imagine a day more terrible than losing Jae until the news comes from Rook's Rest. She clutches her heart and shrieks like a dragon at the prospect of losing her firstborn, her Aegon.

Rhaenys Targaryen's head is cold comfort to her vengeance. She must order the gates of King's Landing barred, to keep the terrified smallfolk from deserting at a reminder of the threats they face.

Aegon, unconscious and grievously wounded, is bundled into a sickbed in Maegor's impenetrable holdfast. It is a miracle that keeps him human, so that the maesters might more easily subdue him and tend his injuries.

Alicent hopes the revelation might finally jolt Helaena from her stupor, startle her from her scales so that she might weep over her husband's sickbed and tend to him as a sister-wife should. The dragon scarcely blinks.

"Fine, my queen," Alicent says coldly. "Do as you will. We mothers must protect our children. Do keep strong to keep them that way."

Helaena snarls and rips a raw hunk off a cold in bloody spite. Alicent stoops down to press a kiss on Maelor's brow. She does the same to Jaehaera. The little black dragon does not hug her in her wings, but does press her snout into her stomach, crooning fondly.

In the Red Keep Alicent wages a war against the Stranger himself. It is she who sits hour at his side, coaxing broth and medicine down his throat when he bites all other caretakers. Only her murmured coaxing keeps him calm and keeps him human. A shift now would break every healing bone once more. His flames would burn them all alive, and his bulk bring down the whole holdfast upon their heads.

In between Alicent runs the castle and the city with cold efficiency. Aemond and Daeron are off at war. With the queen indisposed the people look to their Queen Mother. So does Alicent also ensure a trusted watch over the Dragonkeep. With Aemond having marched off with so many men she is especially keen of her family's vulnerability. And has her agents ruthlessly smother any whisper of 'Mad Queen' or 'Mad Mother' within her walls.

Helaena is still grieving her firstborn and now her husband's poor state. She will recover herself. Eventually.

Before that day comes, before Aegon awakes with a clear mind, dragons are sighted on the horizon.

They are not the abominations Jacaerys Waters woke from the dragonseed. Here are the Bloodwyrm and his Yellow Queen, brilliant and terrible against the morning light.

Alicent writes ravens she knows shall go unanswered and rallies men she know shall be slaughtered. King's Landing has but one dragon of fighting size left and the gods themselves could not move her from her children.

The city shall fall. But the men don't yet need to know that. Alicent rattles off orders in the stern, commanding voice she long perfected as Viserys' queen. Her castle obeys. With all eyes and ears on her, the people momentarily forget their dragons.

* * *

In the twisted passages beneath King's Landing Larys Strong lurches on, aching foot be damned. Ser Willis Fell and Ser Rickard Thorne follow. No one alive knows these passages like he does. Between them limps their snarling king. His eyes blaze like the sun down here, brighter than even the torchlight.

"My family," he growls out. "You'll not leave my fucking family behind!"

"Of course, your grace," Larys soothes.

The detour to the Dragonkeep wastes precious time. It is also vital, unless Larys and the Kingsguard wish to die when a furious dragon king brings down the whole tunnel upon their heads. With luck they can at least secure Prince Maelor. A son, even a young one, makes a more certain heir than two brothers risking themselves daily in battle. Princess Jaehaera is unfortunately one to be left behind. Even a hound-sized dragon is too conspicuous to be smuggled out.

They find the queen looming over her children. Her rumble shakes their bones. Prince Maelor huddles beneath his sister's wing.

"Laena," the king rasps. _"Laena."_

The queen stops snarling. She listens as King Aegon spits out a stream of High Valyrian too fast for Larys to follow. For a lifetime she looms without moving, a statue but for the smoke billowing from her nostrils.

Then the queen blinks, slow and certain. Then with a gentle croon she finally pulls away from her children. In a flash of silver-blue flame her great bulk evaporates. Maelor falls against her with a delighted cry, burying his head into her ample chest. There Helaena holds him as she whispers to her daughter. After another short eternity Princess Jaehaera also falls into her mother's arms. Even as a girl she does not weep.

King Aegon slowly approaches his family. Larys grits his teeth. Tenderly the king runs a hand through his sister-wife's hair. The queen sees Jaehaera's nude form bundled into a thick cloak and then Ser Willis' arms. Helaena puts her son into the king's own arms. Despite the boy's weight he still staggers from the strain of her injuries.

The queen's eyes meet Larys'. His breath hitches.

"Your grace," he breathes reverently, in horrible understanding.

He does not stop her. Her family needs all the time she can buy.

"N-No," the king whispers. "N-"

_"Yes!"_

Queen Helaena turns. As a woman she is short and plump, a doughy little mother. Then the flames take her. As a dragon she is brutally built under her powder blue scales, who has sparred against her brothers since finding her wings. Her children and her brother scream after all. Their words are lost in her bellow, in the thunder of her wings.

Larys and the knights are already bundling them onward. Above, right before they vanish back into the passages, a dragon shrieks as the Mad Mother's flames strike true.

* * *

Alicent Targaryen, born Hightower, surrenders the Red Keep. It does not spare her brother Gwayne, slain in its taking. It shall not spare their father, Aegon's Hand, whom Rhaenyra has long despised. But her swallowed pride earns herself golden fetters and a reprieve from execution.

"I shall spare your life," Rhaenyra rules, "if only for the sake my father, who loved you once."

Alicent inwardly spits at the usurper's _magnanimous_ offer. She remains their only hostage of note. So she prays. Dragons are not easily taken alive or easily held. The blacks do not boast of anymore kin slaying, beyond the child she already knows lost.

Once the streets are pacified she is dragged out, under heavy guard, to behold the body of her babe, her little girl. She lies broken the fall, powder blue scales swarmed by flies. Alicent's composure breaks. From a distance she had already been terrible enough. Up close she can see where the scavengers have started to gnaw, at pieces of scales and spikes chipped away as keepsakes.

"What madness," Daemon sneers. "Your daughter died for nothing."

Alicent appraises him. His proud, tall stance is slanted as of late. The heavy padding on his neck and left shoulder throws him off. The damage beneath it shall never fully heal. Here is the man who ordered her grandson murdered, forever carrying the dying wrath of the most gentle dragon to have ever lived.

"She died for _everything_ , child-killer."

Daemon snarls. He looms like he is a creature to be feared.

Instead Alicent laughs. The sound is as dead as she is, like the croaking of the ravens clustered around her Laena.

"You've four children of your own. Do you love none enough to _die_ for them?"

Daemon rounds on his wife. "This mad little bitch aimed to steal your title, your grace, and sit her spawn above your sons. Why waste our breath on the pyre? Let's chop her up and give her parts to the Blackwater. Such is justice for a family that gouged out your Luke's eyes and took our good-mother's head as trophy."

For an eternity Rhaenyra says nothing. Her gold eyes consider the body of her slain sister, dead from her jaws and Daemon's.

"Helaena Targaryen died with honor," she rules at last. "The pyre is her right, for her place as my father's daughter."

Alicent rasps her laugh. "How _merciful,_ your grace. Will your brothers get the same?"

"They are traitors!" she snaps.

"Was Jae a traitor too, for sitting in your place as heir? What does that make Maelor?"

Rhaenyra says nothing.

Helaena burns on a pyre raised by her people, ignited by the flames of her murderers. Alicent is permitted to witness, though restrained by the treacherous dogs that turned cloak for Daemon. They hold her as if she can't be trusted to not leap into the fire.

Despite her tears Alicent stands unbent and unbowed, like those fucking Dornish. Her sons live to avenge their sister. Maelor and Jaehaera have survived what should have been their tomb, due to their mother's sacrifice.

 _Mad Mother,_ sneer Daemon's gold cloaks, like she was a rabid beast that deserved to be put down, like death was a mercy for her.

 _Mad Mother,_ echo the smallfolk, in their prayers for her soul and for her family. How could a queen not be driven over the edge, to witness her boy murdered before her eyes, to have nearly lost her other children to such depravity? Her actions are forgiven. Condoned.

Helaena's generosity had opened them new soup kitchens and almshouses. She had died above their heads, torn apart by those she called sister and good-brother, abandoned for days to the scavengers. They know Prince Jaehaerys dead by Daemon's command. So do they know why Prince Maelor and Princess Jaehaera escaped. The Mother's favored are those that day for their children.

Alicent Targaryen, born Hightower, sits and waits in her gilded cell.

Her daughter does not die. She lives on in every servant that fondly recalls her charity and her joyful dances above the city. They remember her mercy, her calls for peace against her rebellious sister, and the murdered son offered in return. With just as much horror they murmur of her murder. Rhaenyra, in her mounting executions and iron laws, is compared to a ghost.

And is found lacking.


	6. The Moondancer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Baela Targaryen, the Moondancer.

Once the ninth frazzled midwife in the succession has been shooed out from their chambers, and their girls have wailed themselves into exhaustion, Daemon considers the turns his life has taken. Despite her hearty wails his arms still tremble as he takes the elder girl in his arms. He laughs when she still finds the strength to scowl at him.

"This one is most definitely mine."

Laena rolls her eyes, the younger still suckling from her breast. "I suppose I made this one all on my own then."

"Why not?" he jests. "You're already goddess enough to me."

His Rhea had a certain rugged beauty to her, before bitterness and spite stripped the vitality to her and left only a bronze bitch behind. Mysaria is pale as milk, lithe and lissome when he saw her last. Laena, with rolls from carrying twins and corpse-pale eyes, is fire made flesh. In a heartbeat she can swallow villages in her shadow and rain fiery death upon all who displease her. There is no truer divinity than that.

"Try to climb back in my bed anytime soon, you fucking scoundrel, and I'm biting your cock off."

Daemon shudders in lust and dread. Laena never makes an idle threat. "With two we need not flip a coin to name one."

"Like hell you were naming an only child," his wife shoots back. "You're not the one that's been clawing the walls for moons because of them." She pauses. "But because I'm feeling charitable today, you may name one. And only one."

"Only one? What of their younger siblings?"

"Doomed to never exist, if their father gets himself incinerated before he can make them," is her sweet response. She smiles down at the babe in her arms. "Rhaena. Rhaena Targaryen."

For her grandmother, who dare challenged the Beast King alongside her brother-husband for their rights, who later endured years in marriage to him. Such spirit, all wasted when her own mad daughter had later slain her. It is high time find redemption in the new generation.

Daemon considers his own little grumpy, squashed babe. His first instinct is to name her for his own mother, the formidable Alyssa Targaryen. Common sense makes him hesitate. His mother is very much alive and well across the narrow sea. To name a daughter for her in his exile would be... presumptuous. Too presumptuous.

"Baela," he declares at last.

His idiot brother had dared waste their father's name on his sickly Heir for a Day. Daemon's daughter shall be a far worthier namesake. She and her sister are born dragons. How can they not be, with him and Laena for parents?

For them, and only for them, will Daemon fly across the narrow sea to beg his brother's pardon. Of course Viserys grants it. His heart as soft as Aenys' was toward Maegor. So does Daemon see his second marriage recognized and his daughters hailed as trueborn princesses. They deserve nothing less.

Rhaenys and Corlys despise him. Daemon knows it though they hide behind icy courtesies for their daughter's sake, for the granddaughters they already adore. Laenor, who actually understands his sister's spirit, accepts his new good-brother more readily. Enough to agree with Laena and Rhaenyra their children should be betrothed so early in their lives. Such ensures House Velaryon can never sweep Daemon or his daughters under the rug.

Daemon gloats with his fortune. Perhaps he shall never rule as king, but Baela shall one day be queen, and Rhaena Lady of Driftmark. They have truer claims to both than their own 'cousins.' Daemon doubts any of the boys are truly Laenor's. Still, Lucerys and Jacaerys are dragon sons through Rhaenyra. Their are no better consorts for his girls and no better claims.

In the end, his girls are all he has left of Laena, when her sorrow over their misborn son carries her spirit beyond where he can follow. She flies aimless circles for three days and three nights before she finally drops dead. Only then can they lay her ghost to rest and give her body to the flame.

Baela grows. She shears off her silver blond hair. It only gets in her face when she gallops across Dragonstone's rugged shores or soars high and proud upon his back. She takes to hawking with bloody enthusiasm, shows off her merlin's kills as if she made them herself. She wrestles squires into submission and beats them black and blue with her blade.

Daemon's mother once granted him Dark Sister to wield on his brother's behalf, for both of them lacked a suitable sister to wield the blade of queens. One day it shall be Baela's. Such is her birthright, just as Jace will one day inherit Viserys when the fat fool finally dies.

Those in King's Landing comment Baela has inherited her father's fearlessness. Those on Driftmark, who knew Lady Laena best, know which parent she better embodies.

* * *

Baela loves Rhaena. Truly, she does. In the beginning they are inseparable, mirror images of the other. They exchange secret smiles when even their own cousins struggle to tell them apart. Their bond grows only stronger after losing Mama. Even when Egg and Serys come along, they're little brothers. They never knew Mama, never know the smiles and jokes Papa cracks only for them.

Baela loves Rhaena above them all. Perhaps even above Jace, who shares in her fearlessness, who she shall one day rule beside. Only he is bold enough to race his horse at full gallop beside her own. She thrashes Luke and Joff in the yard, but Jace is an equal rival.

That does not stop her and her twin from growing into different people. The only passions they share now are dancing and flying. But flying is embarrassing now. Their cousins have had their wings for _years._ They still must beg Papa or Grandmother for daring rides around Driftmark, if they don't want to settle for the sedate laps Rhaenyra grants to their little brothers. Baela doesn't want their wings. She wants _her_ wings, her fire.

She searches for them. Good gods, does she search. She races her mare at breakneck paces. It is the closest a mundane human shall ever come to the sensation of flight. Her heart thuds with envy when her merlin dances on the thermals, dives down with deadly accuracy to bloody her beak on quarry. In the yard she burns her way through squires, clashes so hard sparks fly from blunted steel. They are never _hers._

Rhaena waits. Rhaena is patient. Rhaena prays day and night to the Seven to finally be blessed with their parents' gifts. Rhaena prays to the wrong power. Dragons answer to neither to gods nor men, and it is not the Andal gods that birthed dragons in the fires of the Freehold.

Dragons are not patient predators. They hunt and they take.

On their thirteenth name day, Baela tires of waiting like a maiden in the tower. Before dawn breaks she rolls out of bed and sneaks her way outside. Bundled up in a cloak and leathers, few pay her mind. With her short hair and lithe frame she looks like a boy, especially when she dirties her face and pitches her voice lower. She is dismissed as a dragonseed.

From the ground the Dragonmont looms dark and ominous over all the island. The Dragonguard vigilantly patrol the upper slopes, keeping those dens safe and accessible to dragons alone. More importantly, they form a buffer between the smallfolk and the Cannibal. Though the hoary old bitch is rare to fly she devours sheep or shepherds by he dozens when roused these days.

Baela hasn't come all this way to be devoured by her great-aunt. She hunkers down in the rocks until the Dragonguards pass and then scrambles for the closest cave. Some barely breach the mountainside. This one delves all the way down into its fiery heart.

Dragonstone always smells of brimstone, when the wind shifts so. At the cave mouth the stench is especially potent. She stifles a cough and darts inside.

Those of the blood tolerate heat a bit better than most. They are not immune to fire. No one mortal is. Even dragons have their burning point. Soon Baela is sweating and gasping through her leathers. Shucking them aside does nothing. The heat only presses deeper, slow and malevolent, the further she encroaches into the abyss.

The fumes make her lightheaded. Some part of her, the part choking on the air and the heat, screams to turn back.

"No," she chokes out deliriously. "I can't look back. If I look back I am lost."

On the staggers, until that sad, human part of her smothers to death.

Right before she passes out, the fire finds her. She breathes deeply and freely, invigorated by the warmth instead of burned by it. She basks in its core for only a short while. The walls and the ceiling bear down as they never have before.

Baela rests at the cave mouth. Though the heat is barely a presence there the wind over her scales, tweaking at her wings, is a sensation almost as sweet.

That is where the Dragonguard finds her, weary and triumphant. Rhaena swallows her bitterness to embrace her new form. Her cousins and brothers shower her with enthusiasm. Rhaenyra smiles in pride. Papa is too smug and impressed to punish her. Her grandparents, more suspicious, are the only ones to dare press for details.

Baela answers vaguely, once she figures out how to shift back. They believe she found her fire in Dragonstone, and it is natural instincts that drew her to the warmth of the Dragonmont. Such is true enough.

After finding her fire, there is truly no mistaking the twins who were once so identical. Rhaena is slender and graceful, with long hair and gentle violet eyes. Baela is lithe as a whip from long hours of hard riding and hard practice. Her hair is sheared pragmatically short. Her eyes are no longer juvenile purple, but shine like mother-of-pearl. Her scales are pale green, like a summer sea, and her horns and crest like pearl.

Moondancer, court calls her. Baela dances on the night air, over the sea, with the starry skies as her backdrop. By moonlight she shimmers like a thing not of this world. Slender and graceful, she dances through the sky like a fish through the sea. Even Luke, the best flier of his brothers, is slow and lumbering in comparison. They are built broad and heavy like their mother.

"Don't worry, Rhaena," Baela vows. "You're the first I'm ever going to fly."

When she's allowed to, of course. At thirteen she's only the size of a warhorse and weighs less, to dance upon the air. Even Papa doesn't yet trust her with her sister's life.

The next few years should be some of her best, a chance to learn the arts of flight and flame, to grow into herself. She is not expected to wed Jace until at least sixteen and a woman grown. It is a chance to bond with Rhaena as they have not had in years, to help her sister find her own wings.

What begins as the best year of her life so far soon turns to the worst, when King Viserys has the gall to drop dead and Aegon the even greater gall to usurp Rhaenyra's throne, the one Baela shall one day share with Jace.

Dragons should fight for what is theirs. Her parents and grandparents do. Even Jace and Luke are permitted to fly off and die for their rights.

But not Baela.

Never Baela. All the fire in the world means nothing to her father.

* * *

"I'm going with you."

"Like seven fucking hells you are!"

Once Baela would cower before her father's rumbling snarl. Now she bares her teeth right back.

"It's two dragons against two! You need me to turn the tide!"

He laughs scornfully. "It's Rhaenyra and I against a mad little cow and a worm too wounded to fight back. You'd be wasted there."

"I'm wasted _here!"_

For all Baela is a dragon and a princess of the blood, those facts mean jack shit to an island that sees a delicate little Moondancer and a bride widowed before she can even be wed. Jace had heeded her, to some extent, especially in those final weeks when he had truly come into himself. And now Jace is dead. Baela still wears the crown he left as promise. Rhaenyra has dug up a different one to crown Joff with. Her eyes blindly slide over the one Baela wears. The crown stands as silent promise to one day see Joff and her wed, to salvage something of the grand marriage alliance their all four of their parents had once envisioned.

Such is a dream for spring. If winter ever ends.

She should have treated with Storm's End, to have offered herself as a fucking concubine if that's what it had taken to shake Lord Borros from his greedy pride. She should have gone with the _Gay Abandon,_ to see her baby brothers safe to Pentos. She should have fought at Jace's side, to pull him from the water in time.

"Little dragon," Father sighs. "Who will watch over Dragonstone while we are away?"

"The Cannibal?" she retorts.

"Who will protect the people _from_ the Cannibal?"

Baela laughs scornfully. "A dragon fucking large enough to fight back?"

"You grew up under her shadow, little dragon. She knows your scent like she knows few others. Just your mere presence should be enough to keep her at bay." Father rests a proud hand on her shoulder. She shrugs it off. "Truly. That hoary bitch is almost too large to fly now. She's old, daughter, and she's _tired._ Even a few sparks from you should be too much trouble for the likes of her."

"Of course," she sneers.

Father rolls his eyes. With a melodramatic sigh he unbuckles Dark Sister to shove into her arms. "Here. Stab this through the heart of anyone that dares question your authority. It's nearly as effective as burning them alive."

Baela gapes down at the blade that is her birth right. Her crown, Jace's crown, flares accusingly hot. She shoves Dark Sister back into his arms, hard enough to push him back.

For a moment she actually expects her father to be moved. Instead he scoffs. "Please, little dragon. You're just borrowing it. I'm off to go pry another perfectly good sword from the usurper's cold, dead hands."

"The day I wield this is the day I pry it from _your_ cold, dead hands!"

Father blinks. She blinks back, breathing heavily. Then he throws back his head and roars his laughter.

"Fair enough, little dragon. Fair enough."

Were she a little girl, he'd kiss her brow. Instead Father is now near her height. He stoops down to touch his forehead to hers, as if they were both touching horns in their scales.

She still tries to follow them when they fly for the mainland. She gets chased back to Dragonstone like a scolded pup.

* * *

The Cannibal is restless as of late. For days she'll slumber in silence, save for her rumbling snores. Now every day is disturbed by her calls, deep and hoarse as rocks tumbling into the sea. Baela shudders in dread, for her instincts hear an elder warning off an intruder. Once the Cannibal even lurches into the air. All the island watches in terror. She isn't aloft for a more than a minute when she seizes hold of the Dragonmont, trumpeting her territory to the skies. Then she lurches back into her lair.

Baela investigates, if only to put the peoples' minds at ease. There is indeed something rotten at Dragonstone. She sniffs disdainfully against a new scent, strange and _other,_ even more so than Jace's dragonseed had been.

She has been a dragon less than a year. How is she to know the scent of every dragon alive? There's still so many of them these days.

She hopes it a late-born seed, perhaps sprung from the shaken survivors that retained a kernel of how to wake dragons. The alternative is too terrible to contemplate.

No. The alternative is _impossible._ Aemond and Daeron have been clearly sighted numerous times on the battlefield and razing their way through innocent towns. The usurper is still off licking his dire wounds from Rook's Rest. Jaehaera is a half her age. And Helaena is dead.

Baela does her damnedest to track the scent. She loses it among the sea stacks and the Dragonmont's many lairs, most especially down among the villages.

Baela orders the household guard to keep alert for strangers, especially those with queer eyes. She knows they humor her. Still she draws herself to her full height. When she's human she wears only her new suit of dragonscale, stitched from her own shed scales. As a dragon she's still small enough to prowl halls and chambers, to receive regard no men will give a princess.

It's too much to try scouring the whole island for dragon eyes. Dragonstone is a bustling port that receives ships from far across Essos. The yellow eyes of the Lengii are not unheard of there. The molten eyes of the red priests are not uncommon. The Red God's followers oft come for glimpses of the dragons and try stealing their way into the Dragonmont.

At sounds of a struggle down a hallway, in her own chambers, do things suddenly make terrible sense. Baela bolts her door and lunges for the window. She's out and airborne long before the traitorous bastards kick their way inside.

A horse-sized dragon still has her fire. So do the idiots that aim their arrows at her come to find. For all their bodies burn her flames gutter out harmlessly on Dragonstone's sculpted towers.

The usurper descends triumphantly from over Dragonmont's smoldering peak. Once he was the most handsome dragon in all the world. Now his golden hide is marred in scars, most especially where the Red Queen's jaws clamped down upon his neck. His injured wing has healed at an awkward angle and one of his feet dangle.

With a hateful shriek Baela surges up to meet him in fire and blood. He is more than twice her size, slow and awkward from his injuries. Small and nimble, she weaves her away around his flames and his snapping jaws. She falls upon him from behind, savaging his broad back and his malformed wing. Most especially she targets the layer of hardened scar tissue her grandmother's jaws left behind.

For a time the Moondancer wins.

Even when the usurper's golden flames finally manage to blind her, she slams forward and drags her down with him. The dragons fall.

It is Aegon who has the presence of mind to flare out his wings, to drag Baela's body beneath him. She screams at the impact as her fragile bones meet the ruthless earth and his crushing bulk. Still she spits out a broken lance of flame. Aegon bellows as it sears across his head.

Ser Marston Waters and a few others creep forward, to perhaps beg him for succor. They never have the time.

On the ground things are over quickly. One sharp, savage bite to the throat ends it all. The Moondancer dies in a final gurgle.

The Sun King keeps biting.

"Y-Your grace!" Ser Marston shudders at the sound of jaws snapping through bone. _"Enough!"_

Aegon snaps his head up, golden scales stained with the lifesblood of their princess. The men in the yard brace for a swift and fiery execution, for they have disturbed a dragon's meal. Instead he licks his fangs and lurches back. He breathes a plume of dull, golden flames the Moondancer's way. Without the proper pyre the body does not burn. Dragonstone hastens for firewood and healers.

The Sun King lives where the Moondancer dies. He breaks a leg and shatters his stunted wing. He licks at fresh wounds on his back and his belly. The scars from where a second dragon has attempted to rip out his throat heal especially jagged. Aegon loses his right eye. He will never fly again. His wing is now beyond mending.

Before he sets the pyre alight Aegon spitefully rips the head. Something has to remain of her stepdaughter to one day welcome Rhaenyra back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Way back, when teasers for the first detailed book on the Dance were released, we learned only Moondancer perished after fatally injuring Sunfyre. Given the state of Baela described, I assumed she died with her dragon. Even with the teaser released I assumed it was a false herring and she died shortly after from her wounds.
> 
> Then we learned she survived after all. Which left four survivors for the blacks and none the greens after Jaehaera's murder.
> 
> After some thought, I decided Baela doesn't get lucky this time around. Her survival isn't imperative to the big picture.
> 
> ...And maybe I want certain numbers to still line up in the end.


	7. Aemond One-Eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Aemond Targaryen, who came to be called One-Eye.

Aemond learns to hate early on. By rights he is second in line to the throne, behind only Aegon. Instead he's third, all because Father is an idiot about Rhaenyra. And he gets further in line with every bastard she spews out.

He _knows_ they're all bastards. All of court whisper they are. Father is just deaf to them and blind to the truth. Rhaenyra's boys are all Strongs, because she looks at Ser Harwin the way Father looks at Mother. So what if they all look like Rhaenyra instead? It happens. Aemond and his siblings all take after Father instead of Mother! They certainly don't take after Laenor. He especially hates them for all the time Father makes them spend together. Feasts and lessons are terrible enough without his nephews to whisper over him.

More than his low place in line, which grows only lower by the babe, Aemond comes to hate his siblings as much as he does Rhaenyra and her bastards. Aegon and Daeron find their fire before he can. Seven hells, even _Helaena_ proves herself a dragon. Aemond is left grounded while they all fly off with Father on lessons. Mother refuses to let him go with them. Not until he finds his fire too.

When Aemond first hears Laenor Velaryon finally died, it's a relief Rhaenyra no longer has a sword-swallower to hide her bastards behind. Then he remembers every dragon flies for a funeral, to scatter their ashes to the skies and set their spirit free. Father will be up there. All his siblings will be too. Aemond will be stuck on his ground with Mother and the bastards, who will _never_ be true dragons.

"Father," he asks, the night before they are too fly out to Driftmark. "Might we stop by the Dragonmont first?"

Father burrows his brows down at him. "Whatever for, my boy?"

"So that I can jump into the Dragonmont," he states simply. "How else will I wake my dragon before the funeral?"

"Good gods, Aemond!" Father exclaims. He firmly takes him by both shoulders, kneeling down to look him in the eye. Aemond hates that. Father's eyes shine a deep, fiery purple. His own eyes yet lack that fire. "You're only ten! I didn't find my own wings until I was near a man grown. You'll find them on your own time."

Aemond clenches his fists at the thought of waiting another five or six years to come into himself. His nails draw blood at the fear his time may never come.

Sometimes even the Dragon Mother guesses wrong. Grandmother might have accepted him, sure, but so she had all three of Rhaenyra's bastards. They will never be true dragons. It's not in their muddied blood.

On the flight to Dragonstone, swifter and smoother than any sailing ship, Aemond has to ride with Mother and Daeron astride Father. His brother is too little to be trusted with crossing the Blackwater Bay by himself. Older than he is, Aegon and Helaena get to soar on their own wings. They do so under Grandmother's watchful eye. When she growls at one of them to take a rest astride her they meekly do. Not even Uncle Daemon challenges Alyssa Targaryen.

Once at High Tide Aemond has to roll his eyes through a whole feast of condolences Rhaenyra's way. As if she ever really loved Laenor. As if her bastards deserve hugs for losing a man who wasn't their real father. When he can take the simpering no longer Aemond storms out to the grounds the Dragon Mother claimed. Her glowing green eye watches him suspiciously. She rumbles low in her throat, but thankfully isn't one for conversation. She hasn't talked since long before Aemond was born. Alyssa Targaryen gave up her human form long before that.

"I'll by like you one day, won't I?" he mumbles. "Proud and strong? Untouchable. N-Not like Grandfather?"

Baelon Targaryen had not died a dragon, old and mighty. He had died of a burst belly in human shape, ingloriously dead before he could become a dragon king.

The Dragon Mother raises her head to consider him fully. Her other eye burns wine-red. The green one had never shifted from her. That has not stopped her from becoming the greatest dragon in all the world, second only to the ancient Cannibal.

Aemond braces for a grand reveal of his destiny. His grandmother's only response is to snort in his direction. He is almost blown onto his arse from a guest that smells of smoke and scorched sheep. His eyes narrow at the challenge he hears in it.

Of course. Dragons must be bold enough to forge their own fortune. That's how the Conqueror formed his kingdom. That's how Grandfather and Father won their claims to the throne, when the Queen Who Wasn't tried to steal it back from them.

Aemond winds up sharing a room with Daeron. At least the brat is a heavy sleeper. He doesn't even stir when Aemond creeps his way out.

Driftmark is a mundane island. No fire buns at its heart. So instead he climbs to the tallest parapet in High Tide. Baelon Targaryen found his wings by throwing himself from the Dragon Keep, for all the city to see. Aemond will have to do so without discovery. The air thrums with the Dragon Mother's sleeping breaths. She'd snatch him right up if he dared leap before her nose.

He pauses at the edge. He inhales deeply as he works up the courage to-

"What are you doing?"

Aemond whirls around, heart in his throat. Reflexively he lifts his dagger, one of true live steel. He carries it everywhere now. His siblings have fangs and fire at a moment's whim so he competes as best he can.

He lowers it with a snarl. It's just fucking Joffrey, big blue eyes bright in the dark.

"What are you doing here?" he hisses back.

The brat juts his chin out. "I asked you first!"

"I'm older than you!"

Joffrey wanders to the edge. Aemond grits his teeth at how close the brat comes. He stands on his tip toes, reaching a pudgy hand skyward. "Papa used to take us out here," he whispers. "It's the closest we can get to Auntie Laena. And now Papa's up there too. I-I just wanted to talk to them."

Aemond laughs scornfully. "Your aunt is just ash, brat, and your papa is rotting in the yard. Not that he was ever your real papa."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"It means you're a bastard!"

Joffrey gasps. "T-That's a mean word, Aemond. Papa says we don't use those words to people we love!"

"I don't love you!" he snaps. "And your fucking papa never did!"

Joffrey opens his mouth to scream. Aemond slaps him hard across his face, to shut him up. To show the bastard his place. He lands heavily against the stone.

_"Stop!"_

He freezes. Then he considers his witnesses. Jacaerys and Lucerys are half his age and half his size. He sneers at the wooden blade Jacaerys brandishes like Blackfyre.

"Run back to your mama, little Strongs," he sneers. "Tonight isn't about you."

Lucerys scrunches his face in confusion. Joffrey sniffles against his scraped and bloody face. Jacaerys, just old enough to understand his insult, snarls right back. He surges forward with a roar of rage. Aemond laughs and beats him down like the dog he is.

But the dog is not alone. Joffrey lunges at him from behind. It makes him stumble enough for Lucerys to sink his dagger into his eye.

Aemond lets the fire take him. He shrieks his pain and his rage. His fury is drowned out by a roar like thunder.

The Dragon Mother descends like a vengeful goddess. She rips them apart with ease. She is a living barrier between them while he blindly rages against her side. Only his mother's horrified shriek brings him back to himself. He awkwardly hunches forward on his wings when she grabs his face, dabbing her skirts at the side he _still_ can't see out of.

Aemond loses his eye and his dignity that night. For months after Father and Grandmother drill him relentlessly, as if to make him regret his fire with all their lessons. But once ignited his fire can never be doused. His spirit can never be shackled. He is a dragon, for now and forever. One day he shall be as massive and feared as the Dragon Mother, as the Cannibal herself.

It takes him years to compensate for his lost eye. His depth perception is never what it should be. For months he is prone into bumping into walls, grating against others in the hall. The dimensions of flight are too dizzying for precision. Aemond fights with all he has, and holds nothing back. Unbarred brutality wins his spars against Daeron and Aegon when nothing else will.

When there are maidens to woo he wears his lover's eye, the striking sapphire that fills the unsettling hole in his socket. The deep blue returns some color to his face. Since his shift his eyes are no longer deep violet. They are not silver like Helaena's or even corpse-pale like Aunt Laena's had been, but a dull shade of ashen gray not unlike his scale color.

The damn stone falls out every shift. Come wartime, when he needs to transform at any moment, he abandons the sapphire entirely. His empty socket reminds the realm he has been a bloodied warrior for a decade now. It is testament to the fact dragons fight on the front lines, not cowering behind their armies like some commanders seek to try. Brave or timid, they perish in his flames all the same.

In the end Aemond takes his vengeance, for himself and his family. He goads Lucerys out of his shelter in Storm's End and into the air. Without guest right to hold the back Aemond gouges out the eyes he is owed. The bastard dies blinded and screaming.

With the Dragon Mother long dead, it is the Red Queen that becomes the largest active threat to Aegon's crown. For all he is a fraction of her size it is Aemond who lands the killing blow on her, who saves Aegon from certain death. His blood sings as he bellows his victory to the skies, feeling half a conqueror and half a god. Before her body is burned he rips off her skull as a trophy. Mother deserves peace of mind that the bitch who near ripped their family apart is dead.

In killing the Red Queen Aegon has not only avenged his immediate family, but his whole dynasty. His father and grandfather near lost their throne when Rhaenys asserted her false rights, the same the bitch Rhaenyra claims. Her blood shall never trouble them again when he's through.

Aemond is crowned Prince Regent and Protector of the Realm while Aegon recovers. He wears the Conqueror's crown more easily than his brother ever did. Aegon chafes under its weight. Aemond does the Conqueror justice, burns his way to victories across the Reach and the riverlands. The realm once more comes to dread the shadow of dragons. Hells, he even looks better in it.

The largest threat left in the realm, the last great dragon to slay, is the Blood Wyrm himself. Daemon wormed his way into Rhaenyra's bed and their whole realm into this war. It is by his hand Jaehaerys, a boy of seven, is dead. Aemond hungers for the thrill of the fight, the glory of a slaying even more prestigious than the Red Queen's. This one he shall take alone, without his brothers to steal his thunder.

Aemond marshals an army. Harrenhal is easily taken, with the Blood Wyrm off to steal the Iron Throne and _slaughter his sister_ instead. Ser Simon and his line are treacherous cowards who yielded their castle too easily. Had they bothered to put up a fight than Daemon might have still been here to slay. It is only justice for Helaena to execute them all in Daemon's stead. If his sister, the gentlest dragon in all the world, had fought to the end, why not an aged knight and all his grandsons?

He does however spare Alys Rivers, with her thick black hair and mesmerizing eyes. What secrets she whispers to him are worth more than all the fickle dragon dreams that drove his line to ruin as oft as they had to salvation. His Alys only sees true things and works her will upon the world as no mere woman can. She is no dragon, but just as enthralling. Such is why he lets her spare the squire he otherwise would have burned for daring to report the hideous losses of the Fishfeed.

Such is why he saves his Alys once more, when Sabitha Frey seizes Harrenhal. His babe is planted in her belly. His throne is planted in her visions. She sees what is to come in storm clouds and mountain pools, in the gray fires he lights each night for them.

"Tell me, Alys," he drawls. "Shall I make a queen of you?"

She smiles like a cat. "So you shall, my dragon."

Aemond smirks. What need has he of the Four Storms, when their father bent over backward to accommodate Little Luke Waters? "And is it a dragon you carry?"

She presses a tender hand to her slight bump of a belly. "I feel his fires licking at my womb."

"What of my uncle? Shall I mount his skull over my throne?"

His Alys' eyes glint. "In him you shall find your glory, my dragon, the greatest left to win."

He bares his teeth in eagerness. "Yes, yes. But _where_ shall I find him? Without his whore to tip the scales?"

Alys tells him. He guffaws at the answer. They return to Harrenhal, where he found his Alys and made their son. Here is where the Conqueror burned Harren Hoare and all his garrison alive, to prove a dragon's wrath to all the Seven Kingdoms.

With Alys astride him he suspiciously circles Harrenhal for any sign of an ambush. There is no sight or scent of Nettles. Daemon looms alone. Only then does Aemond land. He lowers himself as low as he can into the dirt, so that he might more gently ease his lady to the earth. Daemon's red eyes stare down at her. Alys calmly stares back, a hand on her belly. Aemond bares his teeth until his uncle grudgingly retreats a single step back.

As one they transform. Aemond flexes his fingers, ready to call on his wings at any moment. Daemon stands in blood-red scales, with Dark Sister at his side.

"Good afternoon, nephew," the Blood Wyrm calls mildly. "Who told you where to find me?"

"My lady," Aemond rumbles fondly. "She saw you in a storm cloud, in a mountain pool at dusk, in the fire I lit to cook our suppers. She sees much and more, my Alys." He searches his uncle's face carefully for any glimpse he realizes the true magnitude of this moment. But Daemon only scoffs. So Aemond smiles smugly back. "Your daughter fought bravely. But it was not her seat to defend, and my brother killed her all the same."

Daemon freezes. Now it is his turn to hunt Aemond's face. He snarls at the honesty there.

"Were I not alone, you would not have come."

"Yet you are, and here I am." He licks in lips in anticipation of the blood soon to wet them. "You have lived too long, nuncle."

His uncle laughs hollowly. "On that much we agree."

Their human forms fall away in fire as they surge into the skies. Despite the setting sun their flames set the Gods Eye below alight in a brilliant array of reds and grays. But Daemon's wide walls of flame never strike true. Aemond is too small, too swift. He weaves his away through the broad holes in his uncle's offense. The Blood Wyrm is too large to move like he used too. Even as the red dragon snaps after him Aemond ducks and dives. He tests his blind spots, his response time.

When he has learned all he can Aemond swoops away. Daemon beats his wide wings for height. Aemond had attacked the Red Queen from above, forcing her down to earth, tearing into her neck and her wings. Daemon does not know his daughter tried and failed to do the same against Aegon, but Aemond's lady sees much and more.

This time Aemond dives. Daemon's flames barely sear his crest. Then he sharply surges upward.

His jaws find the Blood Wyrm's throat, and his claws the belly. He digs his talons in deep and rips. Steaming entrails are exposed to the outer air.

Daemon groans as they stop rising, as they lurch and start falling to earth. The Blood Wyrm leans forward to take him with him.

Yet this too is a trick Aemond knows. He kicks himself free and dives to the left, to escape the wide shadow of those wings.

The Blood Wyrm's bulk burns away in red fire. Aemond freezes in confusion. He snaps his head to the right, to cover for his blind side.

Daemon roars in rage.

Aemond's last sight is silver hair streaming against the light before Dark Sister eclipses all else. Valyrian steel strikes true, and sinks through dragonbone like little Luke's dagger never could.

For a moment, there is searing pain like losing his eye a thousandfold.

Then, crushing numbness.

So dies Aemond One-Eye.


	8. The Bloodwyrm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Daemon Targaryen, the Blood Wyrm and the Rogue Prince.

Daemon is born in his brother's shadow. Viserys is the firstborn and Daemon the spare son's spare. He shall hold no lands of his own, is prince by more courtesy title than not. Viserys carries the name of a boy who should have been king before Jaehaerys the Wise. Daemon is at best named for a fucking _Velaryon._

Viserys never has to fight for what is rightfully his. The servants and maesters appreciate his docility. He makes _friends_ for it. Their parents look on in pride. They never pressure Viserys to find his fire, but assure him he will find it in due time.

With such odds against him of course Daemon goes down swinging. If the maesters criticize his handwriting then he'll just put down the bawdiest songs he's picked up from the taverns. The septas that whisper to each other he is a demon prince find their fears proven true by the dead rats sneaked into their sheets and the High Valyrian he rasps like a boy possessed during prayers. Court is exasperated by him. Every whore, cut-purse, and gambler soon learn to see through his disguises, to smile wryly at his face and hail him as their rogue prince.

Though dragons answer only to themselves the adults still try to punish him like a common, naughty child. Grandfather settles for looks of distant disappointment. The Wise King has far better things to do than discipline grandchildren. Even Grandmother, for all Daemon can't help but quail before her glare, has Gael and ruling a realm to concern her. Father thunders like a storm when wroth, but never actually raises a hand to either of his sons. So long as Daemon stands quietly and keeps his face still, Father thinks he's learned his lesson, and he escapes with minimal punishment.

Not so with Mother. She is never fooled by his lies, his pleas, even the very rare times he resorts to tears.

"Little dragon," she says coldly, the first time he is hauled from a whorehouse just from watching the performance. "Dragons do not cry."

After that day Daemon does not. Tears are for the weak.

In time Daemon does prove himself a true dragon. It takes long, bitter years of broken bones from pushing himself in the training yard and leaping out of trees, more weeks spent punish for his failed attempts than not. He soars on blood-red wings and makes the city tremble with his call.

Viserys comes to be called the Gilded Prince, for his violet scales are tipped in gold. He makes as fat a dragon as he does a prince. Daemon earns the name of Blood Wyrm early and wears it with pride.

Still, Viserys earns the firstborn's favor. Aemma Arryn may be a tiny little bitch, but she is still of the blood. Daemon feels the fire in her icy blue glare whenever he dares linger in her presence too long, when he dares gift Rhaenyra some trinket or other. His niece at least has the father her sire does not. She gets it from her mother. Perhaps in time she shall even find her own wings.

With Aemma taken, there are no brides of close dragon blood left. Daemon, in no rush to be bound in marriage, is content to wait for Laena or Rhaenyra to come of age for him. Instead he is shackled to Rhea Royce. She is heiress to vast holdings in the Vale, carries an impeccable lineage at least by Westerosi standards if not Valyrian. She only has a distant drop of Velaryon in her.

At first Daemon is thrilled by the concept of becoming Prince of Runestone, in claiming such storied history for his own domain. Unfortunately Rhea does not recognize her sex and her humanity make her subservient to her dragon husband. The Bronze Bitch stands defiantly as Meria fucking Martell. Daemon comes to despise her as much as he does the Vale for taking her side. On the rare times they come together, he tries to fuck a son onto her. His wife can't even perform her basic purpose.

If her disobedience and their horribly mismatched blood were not enough grounds for an annulment, a barren marriage certainly is. Not that Daemon can dare voice his discontent. Runestone cements their claim on the Vale, prevents Rhaenys and Corlys from stealing away its support. Until Father is actually crowned King of the Seven Kingdoms, the Iron Throne is not truly theirs.

So, whenever Daemon's unhappiness bubbles up in the presence of his father and grandfather, he swallows it down like poison. Under Mother's mismatched stare, he remains uncharacteristically quiet, a dutiful son and prince.

When Father has the gall to drop dead of a burst belly, it is Daemon who flies from the Vale to the riverlands to rally an army to stand against the fleet the Sea Snake raises for his wife and son. Father's claims are now Viserys'. Precedent will one day make them Daemon's. After all, Rhaenyra is still an unproven girl, and Aemma yet to spew out a son that's survived his cradle.

On her own Rhaenys presents her claim impressively enough. The little whelps that flutter down to stand beside her weaken her argument. For all his fat Viserys looms as a dragon noticeably larger. Daemon stands as his heir, the Blood Wyrm that can snap little Laenor's serpentine neck like a twig. Their mother towers over them both, her wings casting a dark shadow over Harrenhal as the Conqueror once had. Of course the Great Council swings resoundingly in their favor. Daemon has never doubted they would.

He has scarcely begun his celebrations for the victory when Mother summons him. Immediately he rolls off his maid. Alyssa Targaryen is not one kept waiting.

Even before Daemon reaches her chambers he feels the temperature in the vicinity moderately warm. More than nerves start the sweat beading on his neck. Harrenhal is built on a scale for giants, and Mother's position has earned her some of the largest quarters in the keep. Still, he feels stifled the moment he steps inside. The air is hot, heavy, and bears down from the weight of Alyssa Targaryen's presence.

Dragons are fire made flesh. They have hands and wings, skin and scales, all at a moment's whim. Such power does not come without price. The older a dragon grows, the more they are forced to choose. The Good Queen died old and frail in her bed. The Wise King blinks helplessly in his throne without realizing the skies were ever his. Mother clings to humanity by her claws. Since Father died they never retract back into nails.

"Today is a joyous one, Mother," he ventures, if only to dissipate the thunderous silence. "Father has been avenged. Our throne is secure."

"Viserys' throne, my little dragon," she amends sweetly. The sound lisps through her sharpened canines. "To almost certainly pass to one of his children one day, when he or she proves herself a dragon." Daemon freezes as her clawed hand cups his chin. "As their uncle it falls to you to protect them, to uphold their rights over whatever spawn of Rhaenys thinks to usurp them."

"O-Of course, Mother." Gods damn his stutter! "Forever and always."

"It warms my heart to heart your devotion, little dragon. You have always been a diligent brother, raising up an army to protect your future king so. Little Rhaenyra and all her brothers yet unborn are your blood, _my_ blood. This realm cannot tolerate another Maegor."

Maegor had been ruled only by his own desires, with no more forethought than an animal. Dragons answer only to themselves, but the Beast King had been a beast at the end, a danger to their dynasty best eradicated.

"Never, Mother," he vows.

Alyssa Targaryen smiles, black dragonbone showing through white enamel. "Good. Then I believe I may finally entrust you with _this."_

Daemon blinks down in fearful bewilderment in Dark Sister and its sheath are passed into its hands. He searches his mother's face carefully, peering beyond the scales at her hairline for the pinched, weary look Grandmother had worn in her last years. Mother is strong. Mother is constant. How she can be dy-

She laughs at him. "Not to worry, little dragon. I have no intention of following your father anytime soon. I am simply... moving beyond blades." She takes Daemon's hands in hers, to curl his fingers around their birthright. "Dark Sister is part of a mated pair, bound to the crown. Protect our blood with it. Pass it down when the time comes, should you believe your child a worthy consort of the throne. This is your burden, as Blackfyre is to your brother."

Red eyes meet her own unflinchingly. "I vow on fire and blood to never let you down."

"I know you won't." Alyssa bares her teeth to him in something like a smile. "Dragons protect their own, Daemon, and dragon mothers especially so. You'll understand once you grant your Rhea a child."

Daemon's face has no time to curdle before his mother strides forth with terrible intent. Desperately he follows.

Outside Alyssa Targaryen gives up any pretense of humanity. Wine-red flames consume her. Larger and larger she looms, as her deep violet wings throw all the world into shadow. In breathless awe Daemon watches his mother soar, to never truly come down again.

Mother dies not die. She does not even properly retreat from the world. She takes up residence in the Dragonkeep, to both watch over her dynasty and claim a territory apart from the Cannibal. The great dragons always near destroy Dragonstone whenever they clash.

When Grandfather's misery finally ends, only then does Daemon ask Viserys to at last annul his marriage. His reign should be a time for new beginnings.

But Viserys only sighs as if they are boys again, putting a condescending hand upon his shoulder. "If we wish to rule the realm we must answer to its laws, Daemon. You have your duties to Rhea just as I do to my Aemma."

Daemon throws off his hand with his snarl. Aemma, for all her miscarriages, has at least granted Viserys a bold, healthy daughter. Rhea has never once quickened with his seed. He knows better than to ask again. His brother has a dragon's bullheadedness. Once his mind his made up not even the gods themselves can change it.

With Daemon currently denied a proper legacy, he tries to build his name elsewhere. He does not get a chance to truly try being master of coin or master of laws before jealous Otto Hightower has him shunted to the City Watch. As its Commander Daemon finally has the room to soar. Two thousand men hail him as their Prince of the City, who has granted them order and the means to restore peace. Crime falls. Mysaria, despite her clever hands, has a mind even sharper. Her intelligence dismantles the gangs and conspiracies his gold cloaks cannot stamp out on the ground level.

For once, Daemon is content, even as Viserys stubbornly clings to his hope of a son.

Then the little shit has the gall to actually be born, and the grace to die right after. Daemon speaks no slander of his nephew. Baelon had indeed been but the heir for a day. Yet that is all the fig leaf Viserys needs for his screen of righteous fury, to declare his daughter Princes of Dragonstone and deny Daemon his rights.

Daemon storms out of King's Landing that very night. The only other option is to become a kin slayer and make his mother one in turn. Daemon can most certainly kill his fat, complacent brother, just as certainly as their mother would then slay him in turn to restore her line's good name.

On Dragonstone Daemon cools down and plots his next move. In those weeks Mysaria misses her moon's blood.

Daemon's first response is to crow, spinning Mysaria in his arms. Then he falls back into bed with a hearty laugh. "Mysaria, you've given me what my lawful bitch of a wife could not in over a decade of marriage."

Mysaria, pale as milk, looks especially ravishing when she flushes with pleasure. A tender hand goes to her belly. "A dragon's child deserves a dragon's rights."

Daemon's jaw sets as his joy curdles once more into rage. In this realm his blessing is but a bastard, his true love a whore instead of his lawful wife. "Our child deserves a _throne."_

Color drains from Mysaria's face. "Surely..."

"I shall forge them one," he declares, "just as I shall forge your crown. We shall make our own names as the Conqueror did."

Mysaria seizes him in a kiss. He eagerly returns it. The smell of her child on him, the wide horizons ahead, light a fire in his blood he has not felt since the day he first proved himself a dragon.

Until Daemon has won the power to throw the Bronze Bitch aside, Mysaria remains his wife in spirit only. If he cannot honor her without drawing comparisons to Maegor, then he shall honor the babe in her belly. Mysaria is Lyseni, of far purer Valyrian blood than the single drop Rhea can claim. Their child will most certainly be a dragon. Dragonstone alone maintains the secret of stitching dragonscale into armor near unmatched in lightness and durability as Dragonstone alone maintains a steady supply of dragons. From his own shed scales Daemon commissions a shirt to be forged, one that will fit the slender shoulders of a boy or girl. His child will prove themself a dragon young.

Daemon is still garnering support among the discontent younger sons for an expedition when Viserys deduces Mysaria's true worth to him. Mysaria is stripped of his betrothal gift and thrown onto a ship bound for Lys.

She loses their child on the stormy seas.

 _Your son,_ she writes. _He would have been our son. I named him Aelyx, in your mother's honor, before we gave him to the waves._

 _I shall come for you, once your throne is ready,_ he writes back. _We shall grant Aelyx Targaryen brothers and sisters, enough to rule every island in the Stepstones._

A dragon can burn down an island all on his own, as his father once proved on Tarth. It takes an army to hold and forge one. Daemon amasses one of sellswords and adventurers. There are no shortage of men who flock beneath the Blood Wyrm's wings. Corlys Velaryon provides the fleet to sail them south and take on the Triarchy's ships. One dragon can only burn so many on his own.

In time Daemon loses contact with his Mysaria. Every island is riddled with pirates and every Free City seeks to plague them with more men to incinerate. The seas are never safe enough for her. No island is ever stable enough to start a family on.

After near a decade of bitter war, the King of the Stepstones has still not conquered two of the islands he claims. Then on Bloodstone Daemon hears a miracle - the Bronze Bitch is dead, fallen from her horse while hawking. Perhaps the gods have finally decided to repay him. Perhaps one of Rhea's ambitious relatives has finally tired of waiting for nature to take its course.

As an estranged husband Daemon stands a snowball's chance in the seven hells of taking Runestone. He still tries his damnedest, because it's the least of what the bitch owes him. At least contesting the inheritance provides a pretense to abandon the Stepstones and all its grueling misery. The islands are harder to hold than Dorne, and even the Conqueror had not been mad enough to chase that dream after losing Rhaenys to it.

Though Runestone and the Stepstones are both lost Laena Velaryon is a lovely consolation prize. She is a dragon to the core, wasted on her sot of a cousin. Daemon does the world a favor by ridding it of Haerys Velaryon and granting Corlys and Rhaenys a proper good-son. For all Viserys makes a show of exiling them for appearance's sake Daemon knows their mother must be pleased. Long ago Rhaenys had sought to steal their rights. Now Daemon has wed her daughter.

Laena is not a prize to be stolen. No. She would have ripped his throat out or burned him alive if his suit had been unwanted. But he has done her the favor of killing her betrothed. Together they soar over Essos. At her side Daemon is alive once more, freer than he's felt since those first thrilling victories in the Stepstones.

With two failed unions a part of him never expects children. Once more the gods mock him, this time with a double blessing. They name their girls Baela and Rhaena, for Daemon's father and Laena's grandmother. His firstborn, never truly born, is over a decade lost.

Only for the sake of his daughters, and his daughters alone, with Daemon grovel his way back into his brother's good graces. His humility wins his daughters royal acknowledgement as royal princesses, and a safe home in Driftmark. For the sake of Laena and their girls, Corlys and Rhaenys will tolerate his presence. If only just.

Daemon never warms up to Laenor. His good-brother is too polite and sees too much. Or perhaps not enough. Rhaenyra is a doting mother to all three of her sons, enough that even Daemon concedes she is better than Laena to their girls. He doubts a single one is actually Laenor's. Dragonstone adores its dragons so. Among its seeds they have always found themselves willing, confidential playthings easily disposed of.

Which is only another reason to appreciate the bold woman his niece has become. She is at once graceful and headstrong, in ways so like and unlike his Laena's. In her he sees shades of Alyssa Targaryen in her youth. Or maybe just the pieces they both picked up from her.

After a lifetime of chafing against quiet domesticity Daemon finds himself oddly content on Dragonstone, his hunts limited to burning out pirates and seeking out his girls in their favorite hiding places. Laena yearns for their carefree days in Essos far more, though they both shudder at the thought of ever abandoning their girls so young or uprooting them from their life. Daemon could care less about having another babe. What matters is granting Laena a reason to love their life again.

The year that begins with Daemon losing a wife and son ends with him gaining another. Little Egg is perhaps... sooner than expected, but no less loved for it. Baela and Rhaena are taken by their little brother. Rhaenyra's older boys, already numbering three, don't see the same appeal. Less than two years after Egg comes Serys. He owes his existence to one particular night involving pear brandy from Tyrosh and many questionable decisions.

Court, always a bunch of hens, clucks over Daemon naming his sons by Rhaenyra for both his brother and his brother's eldest son. The amusement Daemon first feels for the drama soon curdles into disdain. He regrets persuading Rhaenyra to go with the more controversial of her chosen names. Daemon is not about to go through the tediousness of playing kingmaker when Baela will already rule as Jace's queen. She has the fire quiet little Egg lacks. Let her be queen, just as Daemon will leave Rhaenyra to the gruel of daily rule. His place is for campaigns and striking fear into the hearts of his family's enemies. Thanks to Viserys' bitch of a second wife they have no shortage of them.

The third pregnancy, so long after Serys', is very much unplanned. The child exists only because Rhaenyra tarried too long in her human skin and knew early pregnancy well enough to recognize the symptoms before she could shift it all away.

To Daemon the child is also very much unwanted. He already has his twins and two sons. What need has he for another?

Rhaenyra's eyes narrow at his obvious displeasure. "This child is _yours,_ Daemon."

"I know it is," he agrees immediately. With him his wife is careful with her toys. She never takes them in their bed and always transforms after to rid herself of any lingering unpleasantness. "That also doesn't mean this thing is incredibly ill-timed. Your father's health is... not what it once was. We might need to claim your throne any day now."

She rolls he eyes. "Please. My father is only fifty-one. The Wise King was still edging out of his prime at that age."

"Yes, but Jaehaerys also had a wife to fly beside him, and flew on long royal progresses every year. When's the last time you've even seen your father fly?" Rhaenyra's lip twitches with the tiniest of snarls. "See? You know I'm right. Can't a new child not wait until you're on your throne?"

Her hands protectively go to her flat stomach. Daemon's heart sinks. That look means this new mother would rather rip his head from her shoulders than give up her babe.

"I have _you_ to fly for me, Daemon, to protect us with fire and blood." She smiles slightly. "Perhaps you've even given me a princess this time. We might finally be able to name a babe for your mother."

Alyssa Targaryen is eight years dead. "Or we can at last honor your own mother," he returns graciously.

Rhaenyra's face falls as he knows it would. She loves Aemma Arryn just as much as she loathes her for dying over a short-lived son, for not contenting herself to the daughter the gods had seen fit to grant her. In their house love and hatred go hand in hand. Daemon knows it well.

His third wife still does not know he once would have had a son named for his mother, just as he still has a daughter named for his sire.

It is Rhaenyra who first brings up their babe with the dead. The omen casts a pall over the whole pregnancy. Rhaenyra, who has grown fat and content with her last five babes, struggles to hold weight with this one. The babe eats into the hollows her cheeks and leaves dark bruises beneath her eyes. Their sons had slumbered sedately in her most hours. This babe roils like a trapped rat.

Like Laena's third babe.

Daemon has not prayed to the Seven since his mother stopped enforcing public attendance of mass. Now terror drives him back to the sept. Not the Conqueror's Sept, erected when the first Aegon embraced the Seven and outlawed the older faith, but to a quiet little sept in one of Dragonstone's fishing villages. There the Seven are hewn in a rougher, more primitive style. In them a learned man might see traces of those deities that came before. After all, dragons were not formed beneath a seven-pointed star, but in the fires of the Fourteen Flames.

If the gods are to take a life, let them be content with one this time. His heart can't bear losing Rhaenyra like he had his Laena.

As his wife's pregnancy advances, Daemon hangs anxiously close. No matter what, he shall hold his wife down this time, and not lose her to her scales. He is by her side when she learns first of her father's death and then Aegon's cowardly theft of her crown.

"Rhaenyra," he murmurs, in the wake of her stunned silence. "Rhaenyra, don't-"

His wife shrieks in a black, black rage. Her eyes blaze like embers. Yellow scales crawl along her face as the temperature around them climbs.

Daemon seizes his wife first, taking her in his arms before the flames can. "Rhaenyra!"

Her right hand clutches at him desperately, claws shredding into his tunic. "Dae," she breathes through clenched teeth.

His wife convulses, then convulses once more. Red stains his doublet as more than just her waters break.

Daemon roars for Maester Gerardys, but even more so for a dragonseed midwife. But he never leaves her side. He alone is strong enough to wrestle her down as she bucks against the bed, clawing at him and her swollen belly. She snarls, snapping at thin air.

 _"Monster!"_ she screams, sparks flying with her spittle. _"Monster, monster, get out, get out, GET OUT!"_

Their child is drawn forth twisted from more than just a hard birth. She is their long-awaited daughter, with a stubby tail and a hole where her heart should have been. Maester Gerardys inhales through his horror and turns back to his queen. It is the midwife, calm and solemn, who cleans their babe and wraps her in a baby blanket. The Targaryen dragon turned inside out, the blanket is solid black.

"Monster," Rhaenyra croaks deliriously.

"Visenya," Daemon corrects softly, for an unquestioned dragon queen. "My daughter."

His, if no one else's. The last child to take so strongly after him had breathed only an hour in his arms. This daughter he never gets a chance to know. She is already gone.

He inhales and exhales once, committing that face to memory. The pale scales framing her face only add to her beauty. Then he drapes the edge of the blanket over her features and gently hands her back to the midwife. She bows curtly and hustles off to finish her duties.

Dragons or not, those of the blood are always cremated. The dragons are scattered to the winds. Those born without fire are interred in the catacombs below. Either way, his daughter shall be buried with honor. She has a name for the chronicles, a place in their line. She is more a dragon now than Serys may ever be.

But Visenya is already lost to him. Daemon settles down for a long vigil at Rhaenyra's side, to drive back the Stranger and his wife's own madness. Laena had died with Daemion. Rhaenyra has five sons and two stepdaughters left to keep her here.

They have a throne to claim for them all.

* * *

Alyssa Targaryen, the Queen Mother, was the last dragon to die in her sleep, grand in her size and the brilliance of her funeral pyre. Her older son, Viserys, died in his sleep far younger, stout and human in a way she'd never been. On his last day alive, Daemon is said to have curled talons, and red scales flanking a handsome face grown hard and weary from war and the loss of so many loved ones.

For a final time the Blood Wyrm and Aemond One-Eye dance above the Gods Eye. Those who witness the color and force of their flames expect them both to die with their jaws locked around each other, to sink into that ancient lake and have their bones be lost for all time.

But as Aemond sinks into his throat and belly the Blood Wyrm's form collapses in red fire. Dark Sister flashes in the sun's dying light as the Rogue Prince drives his blood into his nephew's eye socket. They fall as one. Their impact shoots up a wall of water high as the Kingspyre Tower. No man could have survived.

Dragons are not men. Not completely.

Witnesses await with bated breath for one weary victor to drag themselves out from a watery grave to either roar their triumph or die under Harrenhal's walls.They watch the dark surface for signs of flame, if dragons can shift under such heavy water.

Eventually even the shadow of Aemond's ashen form sinks too deep to be seen anymore. The ripples quiet and the Gods Eye goes still.

Years later Aemond One-Eye's bones are dredged forth from the Gods Eye, Dark Sister still stubbornly embedded deep into the skull. The blade is returned to its proper owners, and Aemond granted the dignity of the pyre at long last. The dredging continues in the hope of uncovering the bones of an ever larger dragon or, as the odds of that become increasingly unlikely, a human skeleton still armored in faded red dragonscale.

Daemon Targaryen, man or dragon, is never found.

The singers claim the Rogue Prince swam instead to the far shore of the Eye. There he survived his wounds and found his way back to his Nettles, where they soared off together in lands not known to Westeros to live out their days in secret peace.

The Gods Eye is a lake deep and dark, with chasms too steep to ever delve. It has never yielded its bodies easily.

There are worse tombs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daemon Targaryen is a rogue with big ambitions. He also has a short attention span and tendency to flake out on his commitments. He's a hero in his own mind, but outside of it... Petty, spur-of-the-moment actions are totally in character. Longer plans that require careful thinking and patience? Probably not.


	9. The Sheepstealer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Nettles, who came to be the Sheepstealer.

Nettles is born under the shadow of dragons. She grows up playing beside their bastards.

Those enamored with the Targaryen princesses, with silver-gold hair and gemstone eyes, need not sail to the Lysene pillow houses to find such lovers fair and willing. The high-end brothels of Hull and Spicetown have girls with moon-pale skin and rich violet eyes. The most expensive of them boast lineages allegedly even purer than some Velaryons and Targaryens alive today. Perhaps one or two of them truly have King Viserys or Prince Baelon as a sire. The dragons themselves don't claim otherwise.

Nettles is not burn in such a lofty establishment. Her mother caters to a less choosy clientele.

Daughter of a dockside whore, Nettles has her mother's warm brown skin, her black hair and her brown eyes. There are many that might claim the dubious honor of her paternity. Not that her mother could say who for sure. The days blur together. Beside from a few familiars, most sailors into port stop by once before vanishing for parts unknown. Nettles looks like her, not one of a vague number of men. She is ambiguous enough to be the daughter of a Summer Islander or of blood pure as the king's.

Of such uncertain birth, Nettles has no prospects, not on an island that makes marriages by strength of dragon blood. She might not even have a drop in her.

There is always her mother's trade. Such darkness might make her exotic on an isle that otherwise prizes Valyrian features. If only Nettles weren't skinny as a boy, with crooked teeth and a homely face even before her nose gets slit for thieving. After that most men aren't desperate enough to sleep with a girl likely to rob them in their sleep.

What Nettles does have is knowledge of Dragonstone's many predators. There are the wolves who gang up on easy pickings and bears who will tear down anything they think is between them and what is theirs. Even the jackals, torn apart by the larger beasts, are predators all the same to those weak enough to be preyed upon.

Above them all are the dragons, gods incarnate. Nettles can only squint up at them in breathless envy as they wheel circles around the Dragonmont or take their tithes from the flocks. The closest she comes to them are the bruises and bite marks left behind on those privileged to be called upon by a dragon. These girls flaunt their scars as signs of their favor. They can command higher prices, for men crave to know the fruits the dragons have ravished. Once or twice, Nettles is even privileged enough to hold a bastard babe supposedly sired by one, for Dandelion knows her herbs and has a soft spot for squalling things and bellies big with child.

Nettles is no predator, but nor is she prey. Not truly. She is a rat, small and seemingly harmless, able to skulk close enough to predators and make off with the choice bits of their carcasses. Scavengers don't need to be strong or fierce, only swift and cunning enough to avoid the jaws.

Between her mother and the docks, Nettles learns around five tongues. There is Common and the various pidgins common to sailors that spend more time at sea than in their own Free Cities. Most especially there is seedspeak, the strange blend of Valyrian unique to Driftmark and Dragonstone alone after centuries under such houses. The men she bargains and gambles against always think her an outsider. They think to talk above her head. That is how Nettles cheats them out of enough goods to fill her belly and get a safe place for the night.

Growing up on Driftmark, she knows her dragon lore as well as any seed, if not more so. There are poisons utterly harmless to men that will fell even great dragons like Visenya, or the other way around. Those with too much dragon blood have to watch their diet around certain plants and herbs. The midwives suss out the mothers that need peaceful reflection or calming teas to ensure healthy children. Those beyond saving, with too fire in their veins, are instead given elixirs to flush out their wombs early before such... misborn children endanger their health too. They can always try again next time. Perhaps with a man not so closely related.

When Prince Jacaerys proposes _making_ dragons, the outsiders from the mainland assume the Targaryens hold a secret spell, that they control who transforms and who does not. This draws idiots with only a distant drop of blood in them, with infinitesimal odds of waking anything. Some aren't even of the blood. The dream of fire and flight makes them forget they are flammable, and no different from all the other masses that have burned under dragonfire.

But Nettles might be. For all she knows, her father might be Corlys Velaryon or Daemon Targaryen himself. Or at least maybe some close bastard relative. The rewards of lands and titles are only morsels to the dream of having wings to fly her wherever she pleases, the power to be whatever she wants to. Burning to death seems an acceptable risk, when the reward is the next best thing to divinity.

Wolves and bears, ferocious as they are, burn all the same.

So Nettles dares to change her fate. First she has the wisdom to seek out the old women on Driftmark for the proper precautions. What she cannot barter from them she takes for herself.

Vultures, dragonseeds, and true latent dragons alike descend on Dragonstone for the Sowing. Most are boys, young and stupid, squires and sailors and scullions. Some are men who never outgrow cocky youth. Few openly come as women, though there are many suspiciously lanky youths, barefaced youths in the throng. They come in rags and house colors, leathers and armor.

They come with crystal talismans and seven-pointed stars painted upon their foreheads. Some come with amulets carved with Valyrian sigils and the dual faces of the Fourteen. Nettles, with a heavy wine skin slung over her shoulder, seems to be the only one properly prepared.

The Dragonguard's primary purpose is to protect the slopes of the Dragonmont and prevent unwitting idiots from provoking the Cannibal. Today they herd them into the dark, winding bowels of the volcano. A few of the fainthearted never make it inside. Several more pass out early from the fumes or flee from the closed walls or climbing temperature. Nettles and many more press onward.

Their true trial is one by fire. Prince Jacaerys' flames burn bright and blue, fed by enough wood to build the Cannibal's pyre. The dragon himself looms over the flames, beating his wings to drive fresh air down into the tunnels. Over the roaring inferno he calls for the seeds to prove their flame.

Most are too absorbed with trying and failing in the flames to pay Nettles much mind. As first screams reach her ears and the stench of scorched flesh hits her nostrils, she strips out of her rags and uncorks her wine skin. She slathers herself in the fresh lifesblood of a ram, stolen and slaughtered not an hour ago. She is beyond shame now, no matter what happens next.

Men fall back shrieking with bleeding stumps or searing burns. One man runs out still alight, chased by his frantic sons. Some never escape the flames. They burn in what becomes their funeral pyre.

With even, unfaltering steps Nettles strides forth into her destiny. Birthing dragons is no secret. The Targaryens advertise the truth right in their house words.

The blue flames lick at ram's blood and human flesh. For a moment Nettles burns, then the heat envelops her like a lover, like a mother. The fire claims her like a father. In them she sees her death and her rebirth. In them she finds herself.

On the other side of the fire Nettles finds her wings and her new life. She is one of four to do so, outnumbered by the dead and the injured. Ulf the White has scales as white as his hair and Hugh the Hammer is so hulking he can scarce squeeze out of the cave. Addam of Hull is near the splitting image of Prince Laenor, gods rest of his soul. His paternity is so obvious both he and his brother are legitimized as true lordlings.

No long-lost family steps forward to embrace Nettles. She makes a skinny brown girl and a skinny brown dragon. Her snout remains as scarred as her nose. Even her eyes remain a similar shade to her human pair, though with flecks of burning gold like her new flames. That is all the miracle she needs.

With four new dragons to mind Prince Jacaerys becomes their primary tutor. It takes a dragon to teach a dragon. No one else in this world knows how to angle wings to swoop and soar, how to curl a tongue to direct a jet of flame. No other knows what is like to have a beast lurking beneath the skin. Hugh the Hammer has such a short temper the smallest upset can send him shifting.

Nettles' vocabulary just becomes even filthier than usual. Profanity in ten tongues gives her mind a chance to be clever, to make lords and knights reel from the scathing tones of sailor pidgins. It allows her temper a chance to vent out word by word, rather than explode out in an inferno. These days her blood is so quick to boil. Mostly because Dragonstone's docks don't feel the need to call her thief and whore and bastard like every last simpering courtier does behind her back. The idiots do not realize how keen dragon hearing is.

Prince Jacaerys is not their only tutor. Princess Baela, newer to her scales, comes to hope bridge the gaps in their knowledge. The prince has been a dragon so long his second self is intuitive. His betrothed is still learning her other side, same as them. The queen herself drops in on lessons only once or twice, to assert her authority over them all. Nettles and Addam are dwarfed by her. Ulf matches her in size, but not experience, and only Hugh Hammer's bulk makes her look small.

But even Hugh is no match for the Blood Wyrm. Prince Daemon's hide is riddled in countless scars from his earlier campaigns. Ulf and Hugh, who preen that their size gives them such a gross advantage over Prince Jacaerys, are thrashed under his stepfather. They limp away from every spar to sullenly lick their wounds and curse away from the Blood Wyrm's earshot.

It is Nettles the prince's molten eyes fall upon.

"Netty, is it?"

"Nettles, y'grace. My mother named me for the plant." The same that stings the unwary.

Prince Daemon arches an intrigued brow. "And what was your mother named?"

Nettles has studied him from a distance, same as she'd studied Corlys Velaryon, even Ulf and Hugh. She sees nothing of herself in his human face, just as there are no features shared between a lithe, mud-brown dragon and the hulking Blood Wyrm.

"Dandelion, y'grace."

The prince falls silent as he recalls a long, long list of those that had come before. His smug smirk is all the answer she needs.

Prince Daemon favors her after that. She is the first called on in their lessons, granted the choice beasts to fill her dragon's belly. Of the four dragon seeds, she is the one in their lessons to always limp off with the least amount of bruises. Her special treatment extends no further. Under Prince Jacaerys' oversight his stepfather only dotes on her.

To an extent Nettles luxuriates in the attention. She likes having first pick of the flocks, watching Ulf and Hugh limp away from their training. The whispers of whore and royal bastard mean little. She has been called thief and whore's daughter all her life. Since embracing the flames she has also been witch and wyrm.

But Prince Daemon's shadow has fallen over Nettles all her life, long before his eye ever fell upon her. She has squinted up in envy at his blood-red wings. As a child she helped her mother apply poultices to the bit necks and shredded backs of girls less than twice her age. One of the girls she played beside now markets herself as Daemon's Daughter, and competes against two others on the dock who claim the same.

Dragons are predators. Dragons prey on even their own, as the Cannibal proved against her own mother. So long as Nettles submits just enough to not incite Daemon's interest further, and Prince Jacaerys remains to keep careful eye over his proteges, this too shall pass. Daemon shall grow bored and wander off to a new whim, as he always does, and Nettles will grow into a dragon as large and feared as the old Queen Mother, gods rest her soul. Even the Bloodwyrm had dreaded Alyssa Targaryen's wrath.

Then comes the disaster of the _Gay Abandon._

The stories state it best is slay a dragon before they can ever breathe their first, live to see a day where they might bring their prison and captors down with them. Daemon had not quite succeeded at it, for Prince Jaehaerys had already found his fire. The Tyroshi are luckier. Prince Aegon flees home on the verge of death. Prince Viserys is lost at sea, surely slaughtered. He is one more innocent child murdered in this war. He is one less dragon for the Usurper to ever fear.

Dragonstone is still mourning when a day breaks to the Triarchy's ships falling upon the Velaryon fleet. Prince Jacaerys is first to fall upon them, for they are his men and he a true prince. Weeks before Nettles would have been seeking shelter in a cave, far from the potential pillaging. Now she is able to soar beside her prince, to teach the Triarchy the true meaning of fire and blood.

Nettles is no stranger to death. She has helped deliver stillborn babes twisted by too much fire in the blood and eased sweetsleep down the throats of raving patients to coax them into final slumber. She was reborn as men fell screaming and burning all around her. This battle should prove herself a hero, a dragon, for she shall avenge Prince Viserys by safely raining death down from above.

But these ships aren't just floating firewood. The sailors aboard are veterans of the Stepstones. They know how dragons dive and pause for flame, the weak spots to their wings. Prince Daemon carries his scars from them. None of the dragons above the Gullet match him in size.

Nettles learns how spears feel when shoved into her underbelly. Her wing bruises from the chain of a grappling hook that narrowly misses.

Her prince, her future king, is not so lucky. He falls screaming into the sea, and does not rise again.

The Gullet is flaming debris and frothing seas, bitter smoke and bloody salt. Men sound much the same screaming for their gods and mothers, no matter their tongue.

When the day comes for Queen Rhaenyra and her consort to finally sail forth and reclaim their capital, they do not fly alone. Nettles waits in the wings with her fellow seeds, circling some distance away while Queen Rhaenyra and Prince Daemon take their right. This glory is not their own. They are only more shadows to make King's Landing open their gates without a fuss. With Aegon grievously injured and his brothers far away, there should be no true opposition left.

The battle plans have not accounted for Helaena Targaryen. With a thunderous roar she rises from the Dragonkeep. She immediately throws herself upon Daemon with a bulldog's ruthless tenacity. She is a mother avenging her murdered son, a mother protecting the two children almost certainly still in the city below.

Her uncle is not swift in ending her.

Nettles trembles with indecision before something in her snaps. She shoves her way past Ulf to... to...

Before she can make up her mind, the fight is over, and another dragon lies dead.

Helaena might have been her blood, might have even her own sister.

When Daemon kisses Nettles the first time, grabbing her by the shoulders, he still tastes of his bitter dragon blood.

She thinks of that other dragon, still rotting atop a mound of crushed rubble, and cannot pull away.

* * *

Upon learning Rhaenyra wishes her dead, Nettles laughs. Laughs until Maidenpool thinks her mad.

Ulf and Hugh play conqueror because they think the realm their game board, just like the one Aegon set up on his Painted Table. Their ambition only proves their blood. They are no better than Rhaenya or Aegon, jealous creatures that must have once torn their nursery apart in their tantrums. The realm has paid for this squabble by the thousands. Whole towns are ash and families slaughtered, all over a rusty chair.

"A queen's words," Daemon sneers of the order. "A whore's work."

Nettles' laughter breaks off into a snarl. The fool smirks, for he thinks his wife the target of her wrath.

_"Do you think yourself better?"_

Red eyes narrow at the outburst, but Nettles is beyond fear. She stalks the gap between them. "You toasted an infant's death so that you might sit his father's throne. When that failed you burned down islands to forge your own. When you grew bored of _that_ you fucked your way back into the family of the one man who tried helping you in that. First you killed Lord Corlys' daughter, and then his boy. All for that _queen,_ the _mother_ of your children, you dare call whore." 

Nettles does not even come up to Daemon's shoulders. Yet, when she is about to close that final step between them, _he_ is the one to retreat. She bares blunt, human teeth up at him.

"A dragon's jeer, a coward's sniveling hypocrisy."

The Bloodwyrm stares. At first Nettles thinks she finally stunned him into silence. Then he rumbles. "I fully intended to let you fly free, you venomous little bitch."

"Do you think I was just going to _wait_ for you to let me go? How chivalrous." She laughs, high and sharp. "The beast that murdered a boy of six and his own niece means to spare his whore. I'd say fucking you earned me your pity, but the three wives neglected before me all point to otherwise. "

Nettles turns her back on him and starts walking.

An iron hand seizes her arm.

"Prince Jacaerys and Prince Lucerys would have both been true kings," she says wearily. "They had already grew up better than you, than Rhaenyra or Aegon or Aemond. So had Princess Baela. Prince Viserys should have done the same. How many more lives will your stupid chair take?"

Daemon draws his hand back as if burned. He opens his mouth to perhaps excuse his crimes or grovel for forgiveness.

He's still fumbling on the last word when she stalks away and lets the flames take her. She snatches a single black ram from Maidenpool's pens, wolfing it down in three messy bites. With bloodied wings she sets off east, into the growing dusk, and abandons Daemon to his demons.

For the first time, Nettles flies free.

She never looks back.

* * *

Prince Daemon's body is never recovered from the Gods Eye. The foolish and fanciful imagine he swam his way to the opposite shore, where his last and truest love waited to spirit him away in the night. It is said somewhere the Bloodwyrm and his Nettles dance free of the troubles of a war-torn realm and a fractured family.

Those slightly less idealistic claim Nettles recovered only Daemon's bloated body from the lake, to grant the Bloodwyrm a dragon's pyre, before flying out into the narrow sea to drown herself in her sorrow. If the uncertain sightings of her being last spotted over Crackclaw Point are the truth, then surely there was nowhere else for her to go but a watery grave. Even if she had intended to escape to Essos, she was no true dragon, and nowhere near experienced to make the flight.

Those utterly removed from notions of such fairy tales roll their eyes at the even odder speculation that the new, so-called Burned Men of the Vale are anything more than some splintered faction of the Painted Dogs with a habit for stealing sheep.

There is too much imagination, and nowhere near enough of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is so much about Nettles that should remain ambiguous - if she used sorcery to tame Sheepstealer, if there was any actual relation to the Targaryens (to which degree, if there was indeed one), her life after noping out of this shitty war. But there is no denying she grew up very vulnerable in her situation and very aware of it... on an island where the dragonlords were confirmed to treat the smallfolk as their personal toys.
> 
> Dragons, as even Daenerys friggin' Targaryen discovered, does not automatically equal the proper respect and acknowledgement. Nettles might be a dragon here, but she's still a woman, unclaimed, and without any official rank or titles. Just because she enjoyed some of the perks Daemon might have offered doesn't mean she really ever had the option to say no, and this was probably always at the back of her mind that her good graces depended on a man canonically known to be... bored and erratic. And we're just gonna leave that there, because yikes.
> 
> Prior to FaB, Nettles' last recorded sightings are around Crackclaw Point. Given that we already had teasers about the Burned Men and their fire witch, I think GRRM laid on those extra sightings in the Vale a bit too thick. The last (mostly) confirmed sightings of Nettles here remains Crackclaw Point, if only because here Nettles also happens to be her own damned dragon.


	10. The Demon Prince

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Joffrey Velaryon, who never escaped the shadows of those who came before.

Joffrey Velaryon is named for a dead man. His older brothers, Jacaerys and Lucerys, were named for great heroes, Velaryons with dragon blood running hot through their veins. Ser Joffrey Lonmouth had been Papa's dearest friend in all the world, a knight beyond repute. A man is still a man. And Joffrey Velaryon was born to be a dragon.

Joffrey Velaryon was only three when he found his wings. He vaguely remembers a bad dream driving him from bed. Papa hadn't been there anymore, already slain by Qarl Correy. Mama had told him dragons did not rot in the ground like men, but forever flew free on the wind. So Joff had run to the tallest tower in Driftmark and hoped his papa could see him.

Instead he had found Uncle Aemond. Had Jace and Luke not come when they had, Joff would have never found his fire. Aemond would have pushed him off the tower to splat like an egg on the ground below.

At the end of that same year, Joff becomes a big brother the first time. When Mother first lets him hold little Egg, Joff freezes in terror, afraid any moment his arms will become wings and he'll burn his precious brother to ash. Joff never does. He promises Egg to be the best big brother he can, to never let anything happen to him.

Egg only exists because of what happened to Papa and Aunt Laena. Joff can't let their family fall apart again when Egg helped to make it whole.

Yet Joff can never be a big brother, not in the ways that count. Jace and Luke never let him carry Egg or Serys around. They're the _oldest_ brothers, the only ones big and strong enough to carry the babies around. One day Luke will be Lord of Driftmark and Rhaena his lady. Jace will be _king_ and Baela his queen. Joff is a spare prince, a dragon without a partner, always square in the middle.

When Uncle Aegon treacherously steals Mother's rightful throne, Jace gets to prove himself a future king. Lords swear fealty to him and Mother as he demands their fealty on her behalf. Even Luke gets to fly off to Storm's End and rally the stormlords.

Joff is granted the 'honor' of guarding Gulltown. Safe behind the front lines, he will never find glory. Not like his brothers can.

His brothers find only death. Luke is ravaged by Aemond above Shipbreaker Bay in vengeance for that day so long ago. Little Viserys, without wings of his own, is brutally slaughtered by Tyroshi. Even Jace, oldest and strongest of them all, is not immune. He forges a new army from dragonseed, burns a fleet, and is dragged down to drown in the Gullet.

Only Aegon is left, and only because he escaped back to Dragonstone before bleeding out. Joff has not seen him in his scales since the day he was dragged from the beach. His little brother might fly again. He is the only brother he has left.

At least on Mother's side. Papa left behind two bastards by a shipwright's daughter. Addam and Alyn are legitimized Velaryons now. Addam proved his blood when he survived the flames that burned so many lesser dragonseed to death. In and out of his scales, he looks like Papa far more than his sons by Rhaenyra Targaryen ever did.

Mother has never truly trusted the dragonseed. She had trusted Jace, and his promise that more dragons on their side better protected her loved ones. Their existence had not saved Jace at the Gullet. Hugh Hammer and Ulf the White are both turncloaks. Nettles fled from both sides, leaving Daemon to die above the Gods Eye.

Addam Velaryon, charged with defending King's Landing, had flown off before he could be arrested. Not like the guards could have ever held a dragon. Mother had never intended for Papa's bastard to be taken alive. Now Joff's own grandfather languishes in the black cells. Corlys Velaryon has never denied the charges of treachery held against him, even as he now awaits execution for them.

" _Why_ , Grandfather?" asks Joff, once he can finally push his way down into the black cells.

"Addam is a loyal knight," Corlys croaks. "My blood. How could I let your mother take another from me, just because he dared show himself a dragon?"

Joff bites his tongue on his reflexive answer that Rhaenyra has taken _nothing_ from him. It is Aemond who killed Luke and Grandmother. It is the Tyroshi who have taken Jace and Viserys, have burned down all Grandfather had built.

Joff has always known the whispers those older than him have tried so hard to protect him from, those of Strong and kinslayer. Papa and Aunt Laena can't rest in peace with the rumors _still_ clouding their deaths. He thinks of Daemon Targaryen, the stepfather who had never been quite content with his daughter as Jace's consort.

He thinks of Mother's war, and all her ambitions have taken from him - Jace, Luke, Serys, Grandmother, the little sister he had never seen, two half-brothers taken before he could share more than a few words with either. And now Grandfather, if his execution shall indeed go through.

"You should have told me," Joff rasps out instead. "I'm the Prince of Dragonstone now. If I had known about the charges, I'd have... I'd have.."

Corlys Velaryon tilts back his head and laughs, a jagged sound broken as he is. Joff clenches his fists and waits it out.

"You really are Laenor's boy, aren't you? You all were, Jace and Luke and you, the babe named for that knight Laenor loved so much." Corlys Velaryon's deep blue eyes rove over him. "His gentleness, his common sense, his unfailing faith in the most tangled family to ever curse these shores."

Joffrey Velaryon chokes down a hiss. "My mother bore no bastards."

"No," his grandfather agrees. "You were all Velaryons. In every way that mattered."

"I still _am_ a Velaryon." Joff swallows thickly. "Until the day I... I take my crown." Jace's crown. Mother's crown.

Corlys makes another broken sound, burying his head into his knees. He speaks no more. His grandson leaves the black cells behind for the hell above.

Joffrey's surname matters little to the Velaryon men still left in the city. They have deserted the city by the hundreds. Those left riot in the streets beside the smallfolk. They scale walls and attack loyal guards in futile attempts to spirit Corlys to freedom. Very few heed Joffrey's orders. Though none dare say anything directly to a dragon's face, the whispers of whoreson and serpent and Strong rage without Grandfather's little snakes to quell them.

With Jace and Luke both dead, Joff might still be Grandfather's legal heir. It might be Baela or Rhaena, assuming either are still alive out there. Their side, which had once more than outmatched the greens in dragons, now seems so devoid of them.

Little Aegon doesn't shift at all these days. His days are spent in Mother's shadow. Her days are spent clutching the Iron Throne, ranting and raving to those councilors left to her. Mother's fire isn't what it was before Jace drowned. She is too weighted by grief to fly. Her flames might be too doused for her transform at all.

For now. Mother has recovered from Luke's and Serys' deaths before. She will eventually from Jace's and Daemon's. She must.

With Addam having deserted, Joff is the only true dragon left behind the city walls. He circles the confines of the Red Keep as a symbol of hope to the smallfolk, a promise their dragons have not yet forsaken them. It is all he can do. Mother has ordered him to never leave its grounds. How can he disobey her when she is still so fragile?

Joff remains a dutiful son, and burns with the disgrace of it all. He is heir to both Rhaenys Targaryen and Laenor Velaryon, the Prince of Dragonstone. In his place Jace had commanded armies and the regard of great lords. Joff, though scarce younger, is but a child not allowed out of his mother's child.

It is high time Joffrey Velaryon proved himself, as both a man grown and a true dragon. He is the only protector Mother has, the only dragon left to fight for both her and Aegon and Daemon's daughters. And fight he must.

In the streets the Shepherd preaches dragons are demons in human guise, the spawn of godless Valyria, the doom of men. And the masses believe him. Ragged survivors of the towns Aemond and Daemon have both burned have fled here. They heard the dark rumors of Daemon ordering both the death of little Prince Jaehaerys and were eye witnesses to Aunt Helaena's brutal murder above their streets. Mother's every attempt to suppress such treachery only fans the flames higher. Grandfather had always been the clever one. Behind bars he is only one more reason for the smallfolk to speak out against their tyrant, their Demon Queen.

The Shepherd is not yet bold to storm dragons head on. Instead he rallies a mob against the Dragonkeep, that Maegor had erected over the ashes of the burned sept there. It is a grand castle designed for dragons, where the Dragon Mother had spent her final decades, one now undefended by her descendants.

From the parapets of the Red Keep, Joffrey stares out at the filthy masses attacking one of his dynasty's greatest symbols. Even in human shape he spits sparks at the injustice.

"Mother," he hisses. "We need to do something."

The Queen on the Iron Throne scarcely stirs. "I am not sending out men to defend that ugly monstrosity of an empty castle. Let the Hill of Rhaenys fall. We'll need every last sword for here."

Joff balks in horror. _"Egg_ is here."

Rhaenyra's golden eyes regain a shadow of their former flame. "All the more reason to keep our men close to what truly matters."

"How are we supposed to _burn_ those bastards if we might accidentally torch the castle too?"

His mother sits bolt upright. "Joff, I'm not risking myself and the whole city over one unruly mob of peasants."

"Then let me-"

_"NEVER!"_

Joff shrinks back. The Queen takes a deep breath, releasing her stranglehold on the Iron Throne. She wipes her bleeding hands on her black skirts. Her first exhale releases smoke, the second sparks. Only after ten more breaths does the last of the fire die down.

"Joff," she rasps out at last. "Joffrey. You are my son and my heir. You will _not_ turn this city into your funeral pyre. It survived Maegor and the Usurper just as we did. You will not take it down with you."

"It's because of you and Daemon we won this city back!"

"We fought Helaena hundreds of feet above it. Her crash killed dozens. The only reason it wasn't in the _hundreds_ was because our flames were too high to catch the buildings." Mother's golden eyes stare balefully down at him. "You weren't there for it, Joff, or for what that monster did to the riverlands. Dragons are meant to raze cities, not hold them."

"I-"

"Your brothers did not die for you to be a child playing at war!"

Joff does not argue anymore.

Mother mistakes his sullen silence as surrender. She sweeps him into her arms and promises an undisciplined mob cannot hold against the castle walls. Should worse come to worse, they will fly away, and she will lead a new army as a wrathful mother driven from her nest.

But Joffrey is not a boy anymore that can be banished to his rooms. He is a dragon. He is the blood of the old, the true, and the brave.

It is high time he shows his people what that means.

* * *

Smoke spills out from the Dragonkeep like a second Dragonmont. Joffrey Velaryon is made much in his mother's image, yellow and stocky. His golden flames spew upon the mob swarming below. The massacre inevitably drifts south, to those buildings not so solidly stone. Many buildings upon the Hill of Rhaenys have stood for decades. Their dry wooden walls and thatched roofs are eager fuel for dragonflame.

Rhaenyra Targaryen paces the battlements of her keep like a caged animal. Below seven honorable knights ride to retrieve her son. They are soon swallowed into the mob. Joffrey might be beyond being talked down and way, lost in a primal state. He will either rage until there are only ashes below, or until he gutters out himself.

Joff is her son. So too is Aegon, cowering in her shadow. While Joff rages like a wildfire, little Aegon has lost his. The guards in this keep so coolly regard him, the superfluous son who shares a usurper's name, who is the Bloodwyrm's seed, without any protection of the Velaryon name. How easy it would be for the serpents in these walls to slit his throat, to escape with their Sea Snake.

Instinct demands her to protect her young. They are both her sons, both her babes. All she has left in the world.

The smoke rises higher. Joffrey is lost to the gloom.

Four of the Seven Who Rode do not escape that bloodbath. Those that limp out do so with only ragged pieces of their prince. Joffrey Velaryon is not quite old or fearsome enough to massacre that mob. His flames aren't even strong enough to turn the Hill of Rhaenys into his funeral pyre. The ragged survivors of the initial onslaught tear apart his corpse for keepsakes and vengeance.

The gods are merciful. A shift in the wind prevents the flames from swallowing much beyond the Hill of Rhaenys. Who cares it part of the slum burns too? Flea Bottom could always use purification.

So dies Joffrey Velaryon, the Demon Prince.

The true tale of his death is last to the madness of the mob. Smallfolk are always fond of the version that the Warrior himself manifested to strike him dead.

With one son left to her, Rhaenyra finally flees her throne. She fixates on her ancestral seat, the one place a dragon will always be safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joffrey was a young, overconfident dragon eager to massacre his own people in his desperation to prove himself. It was inevitable for him to swoop a little too low, to present too big a target to those archers still either loyal greens or had no love for dragons at all.


	11. The Loyal Knight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Addam Velaryon, always loyal.

Marilda of Hull, a shipwright's pretty daughter, raises eyebrows when her first son is born. Though she and her father are of Valyrian descent themselves, the blood is especially strong in Addam, with pale silver hair and deep purple eyes.

Such children are a manner of pride on Driftmark and Dragonstone, where the ties to Old Valyria run strongest. Families pride themselves on every drop of dragon blood. Marilda should boast of his paternity, perhaps even make pointed hints toward a certain dragon or dragon-blooded noble.

Marilda says nothing on the matter. She wears no secret tokens, no new gowns or glitter jewels. Her only gifts from her lover are her sons; first Addam, then Alyn the year later. Some such mistresses raise whole broods. Alyn and Addam only have each other. When Marilda refuses to name their father, the idle gossip dies down after the years. Her lover has forsaken her and their sons.

Addam learns early on Mama will never give him a straight answer. Her reply changes every time he asks who his papa is. His sire is a the storm, the sea, the Merling King himself.

Addam doesn't need a father. Not truly. He has Mama, who men are smart to fear, or else she'll gouge them in her trading deals. For the first ten years of his life Addam also has Grandfather, who teaches him and Alyn man things like how to piss standing up. He taught much of the same lessons. She also knows how to build a ship and tie knots and spit farther than any one else.

That doesn't stop him and Alyn from wondering. They wonder most when they are young boys, still so curious about the wider world. At that age they're still too little for most chores around the shipyard. To pass the time they'll watch ships sail into the harbor. If they're especially they glimpse a dragon.

The Red Queen lives right on Driftmark. They see her most, but her family comes and goes.

Their father might be a Velaryon captaining the finest ships. He might be the Bloodwyrm, red and fierce. He might be Prince Laenor, who flies his cheering children around the islands. He might even be the King himself, deep violet and the largest dragon alive after the Dragon Mother's death.

Alyn watches breathlessly as four adult dragons wheel above their heads in a playful race. Upon their backs their children cheer and urge them faster.

"Do you think our papa will ever do that for us?" he whispers.

Addam, older and wiser, shakes his head. "If our papa is really a dragon, then he has _real_ children. All of them do."

Alyn's face skews up. "What makes us any less real?"

"Papa's never met you, Al. He hasn't seen me since I was a baby." If his papa had ever deigned to see his seed.

"Do you remember him?"

Addam frowns. He tries to remember strong arms around him, a warm lap, a deep laugh. Anything.

"No." He squeezes his baby brother's hand. "And I don't need to, Al. Papa gave me you. You and Mama and Grandfather are all I need."

They're more than enough. When Addam is little, there is the shipyard and its constant construction. Once Grandfather dies, Mama sells his shipyard and buys the _Mouse._ Addam and Alyn grow into manhood serving aboard her fleet of trading ships. Most boys on Driftmark go to sea. Few are privileged enough to one day inherit a profitable trading fleet. There are named bastards that don't have such security from their fathers. Mama built their fortune all on her own.

When the dragons begin to dance over their Iron Throne, Mother frets over Essosi pirates and disruptions to their trade. Still, they are safer than most. Addam does need to board warships that might burn beneath dragonfire. Alyn need never fear raising a sword against an army headed by Aemond One-Eye.

Their side is winning. Until they are not. Lucerys Velaryon, Corlys' heir, and Princess Rhaenys are swift to fail.

Dragons are born dragons or they are not. Even two dragons may not produce dragons together. Always, they are noble, born on the right side of the sheets. The dragonseed that proudly count every degree of dragon descent never dream of finding their own wings. Such thinking is hubris, and impossible. Not even Targaryens can force a transformation. Stories still echo of Aerion Targaryen, who nursed only burn scars and bitterness whilst his children become the most infamous dragons in all Westeros.

So it is believed, until Prince Jacaerys summons dragonseeds to try their fortunes in the bowels of the Dragonmont.

Marilda of Hull receives this announcement alongside her sons. Addam scoffs at Alyn's boyish excitement. Their mother's face slackens. Then it twists into shrewd calculation.

"Boys, you _were_ sired by Prince Laenor," she drops casually, for all to hear. "Perhaps it is time you both proved yourself your father's sons, gods rest his soul."

Driftmark only sneers. Had she claimed their sire a different Velaryon, or even a notorious rake like Prince Daemon, the island might have believed her claims. Prince Laenor's true preferences remain well remembered on the island of his birth.

Addam is content to ignore such foolishness. He has the sea. What does he need of the sky? His blood is saltwater. He was built to soar upon ships, not his own wings.

Alyn is a year younger, less certain in his skin, and not immune to the dragon fever that sweeps across the isle. He is one of many that squeezes into ships bound for Dragonstone. Addam follows solely out of brotherly obligation. Someone has to keep Al from incinerating himself.

Not all the dragonseeds present are young, stupid boys. There are seasoned adults and grizzled elders. Addam knows at least some of those squeaky-voiced boys in baggy clothes are girls in disguise.

Not all are even dragonseeds. Those with silver-streaked hair or violet eyes at least stand a snowball's chance in hell. The crownlanders proudly boasting noble crests must have only a drop of dragon blood in their veins, if that.

Addam and Alyn, pressed in tight, are herded into the Dragonmont's tunnels like cattle to the slaughter. Addam's clothes are slathered to his back. He swoons from the heat and the nauseous odor of brimstone mixed with sweat and scorched meat. Candidates faint. They break down from claustrophobia or the swelter and bolt for the exit. They haven't even reached the actual trial.

Ahead Prince Jacaerys looms as only a dragon can loom. He beats his wings in hot, hellish gusts. Every stroke only fans the flames of the bonfire around him.

Addam grinds to a halt. It is not the inferno that terrifies him, but the dragon prince his mother claims to be his half-brother. He can't see the resemblance; not to a scaled, winged thing without a trace of humanity in this form.

Alyn doesn't halt. He strides to the fire, to Prince Jacaerys, like a moth to the flame.

Addam is jolted from his stupor by the sound of his baby brother's agonized scream. He charges after him.

He doesn't remember pulling Alyn from the fire or the flames that embrace him like a mother even as they devour his brother. Instead Addam fights against strange, lumbering limbs. He douses the flames with his own wings, then hauls Alyn out into the light. He stands vigil over his little brother, snarling at anyone who isn't a healer.

The whispers of the people around Addam are natter in his ears. The only thing that gets through is seedspeak, Driftmark's rough dialect of Valyrian. It's his first language, and soothes Addam like only his mother's voice can. It lets the healers coax him into moving Alyn somewhere safer than the slopes of Dragonmont. Addam never lets his baby brother out of his sight.

Upon regaining consciousness, Alyn's first response is to gape up at Addam. His older brother peers anxiously down, hunched low to the ground to make himself small as possible.

Then the little shit smirks at him. "Guess Mom was right after all."

When Addam first faces a mirror, he beholds a ghost. He already knows the color of his scales to be a pale smoky gray. His reflection reveals a slim snout, silver horns, and a shimmering crest. He looks like Laenor Velaryon come again. He sourly concedes to owing their mother an apology.

Alyn's wounds heal. Eventually. He will bear those mottled burn scars upon his back and legs for the rest of his life. He wears them with pride.

Alyn winces through fresh injuries for his first ride aboard dragon-back. Addam flies smoothly as he can to not disrupt his brother's healing.

Even calming down enough to first resume human form, Addam is never the same. Once his eyes were the same shade of deep purple as Alyn's. Now they're a shade like steel. He always burns hot, like a fever rages beneath his skin.

Addam stops trusting himself aboard and around ships. Every breath might carry lethal sparks. He always feels one heartbeat away from losing control of his shape, like a sneeze or sudden irritation can make him shift.

Prince Jacaerys assures him and the threw other new dragons that self-control will come. Eventually.

* * *

Ser Addam Velaryon spends his own knighting ceremony in dazed belief. He tries not to pick at his doublet, silver and sea blue. He forces smiles against the constant comparisons he and Alyn face with their long dead sire. Addam is _not_ a ghost, no matter the color he wears in this form or the other. His quips on the matter are at first lighthearted. Under the onslaught his replies become clipped, his tone strained.

A dragon under strain is a dangerous thing indeed.

Addam's blood boils so quickly now. The realization he is perhaps one more thinly-veiled insult away from shifting chills his veins. He welcomes the icy terror. If he lets his blood burn, then he will burn his mother and brother beside him.

Addam retreats to a quiet balcony overlooking the sea. He inhales the salty air, coming back.

Before the shift crowds had never bothered him. He had comfortably endured long days in dark, crowded quarters in his mother's ships. Now the conversation grates against his ears, perfumes and body odor assail his sensitive nose in a noxious cloud. The ceiling and walls close in with no way out.

The open sky above his head is a relief. It is an escape.

"Ah," comes a voice behind him. "I thought I'd find you out here."

Addam turns and barely clamps down on the instinct to bow. "Lord grandfather," he murmurs, because it is the most formal title Lord Corlys will tolerate from him and Alyn. "Abandoning my own party is in bad taste, but... crowds no longer agree with me as they used to."

Lord Corlys casually leans against the rail, far from Addam as he can. His grandson appreciates the distance. "You are far from the first dragon to make their escape out here. My Laena could only take so much stupidity from people." A sad smile quirks at his lips as he stares out to sea. "She was much like her mother in that regard."

Addam licks his lips. "And... And my father?"

Deep violet eyes appraise him long and hard. "Laenor basked in the attention," Lord Corlys answers at long last. "He never could get enough of it." Addam shifts his gaze out to sea. "Don't be haunted by his shadow, grandson. Laenor was... unique among dragons in his patience for people. You remind me more of my own mother."

Addam arches an incredulous brow. Corlys is not only a husband and father of dragons, but a son. Lady Rhaena Velaryon had been born Princess Rhaena Targaryen, crowned a queen to both her brother-husband and then to their own murderous uncle. She had flown on wings of her own, until her own feral daughter had infected her through a savage bite. Addam now calls such a monster, the Cannibal, his great-aunt.

"My mother had charisma," Lord Corlys continues. "She was also a dragon, one with very little patience for fools after all she had endured." His lip quirks again. "She started the tradition of Velaryon dragons escaping to balconies for breaths of fresh air, then escaping on their own wings."

Addam smirks at such temptation. "Perhaps another time, lord grandfather. It's rude to abandon my own party."

He and his grandfather linger for a few more moments in blissful silence, before venturing back into the fray together.

Addam and Alyn are heirs now, but spares. Though Lucerys was murdered above Shipbreaker Bay, they still have two true-born brothers. It is the younger, Joffrey, who will one day inherit Driftmark in his place. The elder, Jacaerys, is Prince of Dragonstone. It is because of him Addam is a knight and a dragon, that he and Alyn have names at all.

Addam still cannot consider himself brother to the future king. Alyn remains his one true brother, the one he grew up beside.

Instead he pledges himself to Jacaerys as a loyal knight.

Loyal Addam remains. He trains under Jacaerys to prove himself as a dragon. In their first true battle above the Gullet, Addam fights on when Jacaerys sinks beneath the waves, and does not rise again. He fights on to King's Landing, to witness Queen Rhaenyra and her consort reclaim her throne. While the other dragons fly on to war in the west, Addam remains stationed in the capital. He is posted in the Dragonkeep, to protect both his Queen and her Hand, Lord Corlys himself.

Addam's great-grandmother had despised King's Landing. It was the city that had accepted Maegor as its king over her brother-husband. Later it had become Rhaena's prison, when Maegor had forced her into marriage.

Maegor had ordered the Dragonkeep raised so that his line might lord themselves above their human subjects without ever leaving their scales. Upon its foundations he had raped three of his Black Brides. Above it he and Rhaena had flown in a vicious nuptial flight, barely above killing each other.

Addam guards it all the same. Its corners still stink of Helaena and her children, who sheltered here before the city fell. Addam had witnessed her torn apart by the Bloodwyrm.

Addam comes to loathe King's Landing as Rhaena must have. Only the Velaryon men trust him, and even then they look at him askew. Their rumors claim Lord Corlys as his true sire, not Prince Laenor. The Queen's men uneasily eye him as a legitimized bastard - one now with a claim to both Driftmark _and_ the Iron Throne itself. Even before the Great Betrayers turn their cloaks, Rhaenyra refuses to let Joffrey near him. He is the last half-brother left to Addam, and his own Queen does not trust Addam to not stab him in the back.

Addam uneasily paces the Dragonkeep's cavernous confines. These days he rarely leaves his scales. He's safer in them. As a dragon he's large enough to loom, to make the Queen's men regard him fearfully instead of suspiciously. A man might be overwhelmed and hauled to the black cells or the executioner's block. A dragon must be _slain._

Yet Addam does not fly away. He guards the Dragonkeep, circles the city on Rhaenyra's behalf. His vows bind him. He will not desert them, his family, until his Queen breaks hers first.

And break them she does. When one of his grandfather's little snakes deliver news of his arrest, Addam takes to the air moments later. The day is overcast. With scales pale as his sire's, he blends easily into the cloud cover.

Lord Luthor and his men discover only a deserted Dragonkeep. They could have found their deaths.

A dragon cannot be held. If they cannot flee, they would sooner perish in blood and flame.

* * *

Ser Addam Velaryon's final days are lost to the ages. The singers shall claim he landed upon the sacred Isle of Faces to take counsel with the Green Men. Perhaps those seers might have even told him his fate, but Addam persists anyway, if only to prove not all bastards be turncloaks. He flies far and fast, piecing together an army from those lords still loyal to their queen. No matter all those Rhaenyra has burned and alienated, her loyal knight rallies four thousand men under her banners.

They attack Tumbleton by night, falling ruthlessly upon the greens. The rebel forces are caught unawares. Under a dragon's keen night vision, they are burned by the line.

When the Blue Prince takes wing amid the chaos, Addam fearlessly falls upon him. Addam and Daeron are of an age. They move fast and nimbly, too evenly matched to break a stalemate.

Perhaps, with enough time, Addam would have fallen before Daeron. The prince has been a dragon many years, has trained beside the great warriors of his age.

They are not the only dragons at Tumbleton. One twice their age, and near thrice their size, erupts from the fray with an earth-shaking roar. From his murderous bulk, the deep bronze scales flashing in the dragon-flame, the men below know him to be Hugh Hammer.

Ostensibly, the Betrayer is a green. He indiscriminately starts burning the men below, blind to their colors. How is Addam to know Daeron had granted his men notice to slay Hugh if they could take him alive? All he sees is a monster massacring his men.

Addam breaks away from Daeron. His pale wings strain for height. He falls instead upon the Hammer, driving him shrieking into the mud.

Surely in his heart Addam must have known he could not match such a brute. Duty still compels him to defend his men on the ground, so helpless against dragonflame.

Above the carnage, Daeron hesitates. He considers the raging dragons beneath him, the battle yet to be won.

And chooses his side.

Amid mud and blood and smoke, the dragons meet. In the air it might be called a dance. Upon the ground it is only brutality and slaughter.

When the roars of the dragons die, but for Daeron's ragged keens, Lord Unwin Peake orders a retreat. He leads away the ragged remnants of the army amassed under his prince and Lord Hightower.

Ser Addam Velaryon perishes without ever knowing he had saved King's Landing. Hugh had sunk his fangs into his neck and wrenched his head off.

Lady Sharis Footly is spiteful enough toward the dragons on both sides to turn their bones into a tourist attraction, to regain some sliver of profit for her town.

She cannot keep Ser Addam. He had given his life for his men. He is their savior, their Loyal Knight. Enough linger now to guard his body, to drag his head from Hugh's jaws, and reunite it upon his pyre. The shards of black dragonbone and blackened scales left afterward are painstakingly collected afterward. Young Benjicott Blackwood, who owes his life to the dragon knight's sacrifice, supervises it all. The urns containing Ser Addam's remnants are brought to Raventree Hall to await a calmer day.

It takes eight years for Ser Addam to return home to Driftmark, so that Alyn and their mother might finally lay him to his final rest.

Dragons are traditionally burned upon a pyre lit by the flames of their kin, their ashes scattered to the skies to fly free upon it forever. Yet Addam was first and foremost a son of the sea, of the salt and tide. He is not granted his father's funeral, but his grandfather's.

Marilda sails the _Mouse_ out for a final journey with her sons. Each of the weighted urns containing her firstborn are thrown to the deep. They commend his soul to the sea, as the folk of Driftmark have since time immemorial. There he rests beside the souls of both his grandfathers. One day his mother and brother shall both join him.

Ser Addam Velaryon is too famed on Driftmark to go without a ceremonial tomb, a monument on land to serve as testament to the great sons and daughters of the house. Most stonemasons propose a large and ostentatious statue, a near life-sized dragon with wings spread as if about to take flight. Such designs are viciously vetoed by his loved ones.

In the end, Marilda pays from her personal wealth to erect a simple statue of her son in the garden of her manse. It depicts him with the same sly smile he wore in life before his scales and noble name wore him down. He wears a knight's garb, though one pointedly devoid of sigils. She is at a loss as to the words to place upon that marker. How can her brave, witty, dutiful little boy be summed up so succinctly?

"Loyal," Lord Alyn Velaryon orders, and says no more.

It is all the epitaph his brother needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this 'verse Rhaena Targaryen went on to marry the Driftmark heir after Maegor's death and had three more children - Corlys oldest of them. That makes Addam's assumed and actual grandmothers to be dragon queens.


	12. The Hammer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Hugh Hammer, never content.

Hugh is born a blacksmith's bastard.

He would have been trueborn, if his parents had been allowed to marry. A blacksmith offers a respectable and reliable trade. Any mother should have been honored to let her only daughter wed such a man. Both of them are of the blood, strong enough to display the silver-gold hair and violet eyes.

Visenna finds her daughter's blacksmith suitable a decent enough man. Her husband is all for granting their blessing to the match. He has always wanted a son, will settle for a good-son and grandsons. He is making fast friends with the blacksmith's father, an older man ready to leave his trade entirely to his son.

The blacksmith has no mother. He hasn't for years.

"I am sorry for your loss," Visenna offers. Then she asks the particular circumstances in which the blacksmith's mother died.

The blacksmith's father smile flickers. Perhaps it is lingering grief for a love long dead. Perhaps it is not.

"Child-bed fever," the blacksmith offers guilelessly. "I'm afraid I never knew her."

Visenna fixates on the blacksmith's father. He plasters on a smile as he slings an arm over his son. "She'd have been honored to have known you, lad, Seven rest her soul."

Visenna turns to the midwives. The one who delivered the blacksmith is still alive and well. She remembers every birth, the rough bloodlines of every babe. That blacksmith's mother had survived his birthing bed. It is the babe after that had killed her.

The old midwife hums. "The birth was... difficult. Too difficult. The babe's blood ran too hot."

Visenna, hands trailing to her belly, where the old scars still ache. She and her husband had been easily wed. Their match had created a prestigious amount of dragon blood, not the dangerous kind. It had not entirely erased the risks. Spark to spark can always create a wildfire.

Their first babe, their daughter, had been born perfect in every way.

Their second babe, the one that had come two years later, had come months too early. That is the only reason its mother had dragged herself away from its birthing bed. Its clawed, too-long arms had to be broken to wrench it from her womb.

Visenna flatly vetoes the match. "The seed is strong," is all the explanation needed. "Too strong."

Her husband pales in remembrance at their second-born and offers no protest. The blacksmith's father weakly insists it is child-bed fever that killed his Salys, and falters under her iron stare. Visenna's daughter crumbles into tears. She declares she is in love, and will wed no other. The girl is a sweet summer child, one who has never known _that_ sort of death, and the misborns that cause it.

Visenna's daughter and her blacksmith run off. There is none on Dragonstone that will wed them. Even the septons from the mainland know to ask around about approval on their bloodlines. While Targaryens are exceptional, their bastard seeds are not. For all the septons normally smile upon cousin marriages, there are trees tangled to the point where a match can be as incestuous as uncle to niece, or brother to sister.

By the time Visenna hauls her daughter home, she is already round with her bastard. It can't be flushed out with moon-tea, not at this stage. That chance has come and gone. All Visenna can go is keep her daughter calm and confined inside. They weave together. Visenna foists calming teas upon her. Mostly they pray - her girl because she is pious, and Visenna because the gods are her girl's only salvation.

Her daughter burns hot, too hot. She is raging with fever when the babe comes.

Delirious, she screams only for the midwives to save her babe. They listen, but not for her sake. It is too late for her. The babe too big to be born can still be saved.

Visenna's grandson is born alive and squalling with lungs to wake the dead. Aside from being twice the size of the normal babe, he is physically perfect. He has ten fingers and ten toes, without even webbing between them. He has a full head of hair without bumpy ridges deforming his skull. He has no tail or spinal bumps disfiguring his back.

"The Mother is merciful," the midwife murmurs half-heartedly. Every woman in that room knows not all abominations are born looking like one.

Visenna names her grandson Hugh, Andal a name as one can get. It is prayer and appeasement to the Seven.

Visenna watches her grandson like a hawk. She never finds him dead in his cradle. He sprouts baby teeth and has to be weaned when he keeps bleeding his wetnurse. He starts crawling early, primarily dragging himself by his arms.

Hugh's favorite toys are the ones he catches. He rips the wings from insects, pops the heads from mice. He is fascinated by their blood and entrails.

Wisdom demands such a babe be quietly smothered in its cradle, before it can grow up to be dangerous to being larger than crickets and mice. Already her Hugh cannot be trusted with other babes. He is a jealous babe, easy to rile, and already does not know his own strength.

He is also Visenna's only grandson, the babe her daughter fought so hard to bring into this world. She will not be the one to take him from it.

Visenna tames Hugh as best she can. The boy must be coaxed and tricked, never forced. He starts tottering on two legs only because it gets him places faster, lets him tower above the toddlers his age. He learns to speak even more grudgingly, and only because it better gets him what he wants.

The forge should be Hugh's salvation. He thrives in the fires, never sweats, and is strong enough to swing the hammer years early. It offers him a place to exercise his strength where only steel can be smashed.

Hugh forges a warhammer, and demands blood and glory. He grows into a giant of a man, hulking and brutally handsome. Even with only human hands he is strong enough to bend steel bars.

Had he been born on the right side of the sheets, on the noble side of the family, the most ancient folks of court would whisper _King Abomination._ Though that monster left no direct heirs, the blood of Maegor and Visenya is far from dead. It flows strong through the blood of the Conqueror's other line.

When news spreads of Prince Jacaerys' intention to _forge_ dragons from the seedfolk, Hugh's eyes blaze with vindication.

The flames scarcely need to touch him before he finds his own fire. It has long raged beneath his skin.

The sniveling compare Hugh's bronze, hulking brutality to that of King Jaehaerys. So do the wise.

Only the fools that think themselves intelligent point out how strongly Hugh resembles Visenya, who twisted the realm and blasphemed the gods to support her tyrant son and his ill reign.

* * *

Hugh Hammer is dragon, large enough to rival the Bloodwyrm himself. Such blood earns him a knighthood and lands in the crownlands. They are only the beginning to what he is owed.

Prince Daemon must think himself so clever when he first proposes wedding Hugh to Lord Stokeworth's daughter. It is not puny little Stokeworth he desires. Besides, a dragon deserves another dragon as bride, or at least a beautiful girl of the blood. The Bloodwyrm himself has two daughters, both wasted on Rhaenyra's puny sons. Or perhaps Hugh can take King Aegon's little girl instead. A king's daughter sons far juicier a prize than a prince consort's.

Rhaenyra thinks herself strong when she declines Hugh the Stokeworth girl. She is also foolish enough to let her Bloodwyrm near grant Hugh Casterly Rock and all its gold. Now that is a seat befitting a dragon.

Gods damn the Sea Snake and his sniveling words for talking Rhaenyra out of it.

A dragon demands a strong cause. Hugh and Ulf are wasted on the cause of a weak, hysterical mother. They offer themselves to the greens instead, if only to feast upon Tumbleton's spoils.

As the town burns the same dark copper of his flames, Hugh finds himself mesmerized by their brilliance, by the screams below. He dives low to help himself to the carnage. Arrows and spikes bounce uselessly off his scales. Surrounded by fire and blood, Hugh feels himself a god... or at the very least a king.

Hugh stews in his thoughts, before he gathers the men he thinks most loyal. "Why be a lord," he asks them, "when you can be a _king?"_

His followers believe in him as their king, their leader, their god. Even the gods themselves appear to be on his side. The soldiers murmur of a prophecy, of a new king arising once a hammer falls upon the dragon.

There is only one kingly claimant left now, one too weak to let himself be crowned. Prince Daeron still believes his big brother alive out there.

With his followers behind him, Hugh strides before the leaders of the greens. They stand behind Prince Daeron, a scrawny whelp half Hugh's width and a good foot and a half shorter. He can pop the boy's head clean off like this. In their scales he is thrice Daeron's size.

But, before he falls back on fire and fang, Hugh decides to offer these sheep an obvious choice. He is enough of Visenna's grandson to realize not all battles can be won by blood alone.

"We need a strong man to lead us, not a boy. The throne should be mine."

Daeron responds to such an offer by throwing wine in his face. Hugh has restraint enough to clench his fists, sinking claws into his own palms. The wine on his face steams.

"Betrayer," the prince hisses. "Turning cloaks once wasn't enough to satisfy you?"

"A dragon takes his due," Hugh rumbles. "Isn't that how the Conqueror claimed all these lands? He was the strongest dragon of his age. Your brothers are dead, whelp, and the Bloodwyrm with them. I am the strongest dragon left. Bow to me or die."

Daeron is rude enough to snarl. Hugh bares his teeth right back.

"Enough," Ormund Hightower grinds out. "We are still under the banner of peace."

"For now," Hugh allows.

This time he retreats. That night he twists himself a crown of rough black iron. A dragon-king deserves one of Valyrian steel. He will wrench one from either the whelp or the whore queen soon enough.

Ser Roger Corne has the stupidity to sneer and knock the crown from his head. "A crown does not make a man a king. You should wear a horseshoe on your head, blacksmith."

Hugh snatches him by the throat. "You forget, ser, I am no man at all."

Soldiers surge forward, his supporters and Ser Roger's. When Hugh orders his men back, most are wise enough to scatter. A foolish few still perish when the flames take them. They should have heeded their king's warning.

Roger, badly burned, is still alive enough to scream when Hugh punctures his skull with one black dragonbone fang.

* * *

The Caltrops think themselves dragon-slayers. Ser Jon Roxton thinks himself clever when he slices Orphan-Maker through Hugh's gut. The Hammer falls upon him in fire and blood, squashing him beneath his bulk as he shifts up and outwards. His roar splits the air like thunder.

Heaving his bulk into the air, the Hammer unleashes an indiscriminate inferno beneath the battle below. Green or black, they all deserve to _burn._ He cares little for any supporters of his down there. All he feels is the pain and the seething fury that has devoured whatever remains of his conscious mind.

A pale dragon a fraction of his size falls upon from above. They fall into the mud and blood. The Hammer grapples for its throat, for its wings, for anything he can tear into. He stops only to savage the other dragon that falls upon him, deep blue and bronze. To him they are only rats.

The blue whelp finally lurches away, moaning deep in his throat. The Hammer ignores it to sink his fangs into the neck of the pale whelp. With one last wonderful shriek the brat dies when he rips into his throats. Triumphantly he wrenches off the neck and head for his prize.

His prize in his jaws, the Hammer spreads his ragged wings and tries to take flight. His aching limbs refuse to support him. His struggles only push the many wounds left by the whelps from agony into chilling numbness.

The Hammer collapses, and does not rise again. His chest shudders still. His blazing eyes glaze over.

Only then do the survivors of Tumbleton creep closer. They come to wrench Ser Addam Velaryon's head from his jaws, to grant him an honorable pyre. And to wrench off bronze scales from his murderer as tokens of this day.

Lady Sharis Footly finds one last use for the beast that burned her town. He earns her a penny for every awed traveler who gazes upon his rotting bulk, and a star for everyone bold enough to touch it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big surprise there's horrible consequences for so closely interbreeding with potent dragon magic. The dragonseeds (mostly) try to handle such incidents responsibly. Sometimes you have babies too deformed to survive birth. Other times you wind up with inhuman monsters unable to see the people around them as people. Visenya and Maegor have no blood descendants, but the genes that made them are still alive and well through their many bastard cousins.
> 
> Readers of the first of this series note I stopped referring to Hugh as 'Hugh' during the last moments of his life. That's because his attempted slaying by Jon Roxton drove him full-blown feral - like the Cannibal before him.


	13. Daeron the Daring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The death of Daeron the Daring, born to the wrong family.

Above the battleground of Westeros, both the greens and the blacks come to know Prince Daeron's shadow well. He is said to be the most handsome dragon alive, rivaled only by his brother the Sun King. His scales and wings are cobalt, but his crest and horns the color of beaten copper. The greens cheer him as their prince and their savior. The blacks retreat before him. They know how he burned their forces upon the Honeywine, and the deadly force that marches behind him.

Under Daeron, born of their blood, the Hightower army progresses easily up the Roseroad.

Everything changes with the First Battle of Tumbleton. The city falls in fire and blood when its own protectors viciously turn upon it. Not even Daeron can end the raiding, not until their are far too many homes ransacked and widows defiled. He simmers in sickness and rage.

Hugh Hammer and Ulf the White allegedly pledge themselves to his cause. Daeron is in no position to deny them. He is the only dragon of fighting size and condition left to his family. Aemond and Helaena are dead, Aegon still in hiding from his grievous wounds from the Red Queen's jaws. He is outnumbered. Ulf and Hugh are twice his age. Ulf is twize his size. The Hammer is _thrice._

Daeron never trusts them. From their first night under his 'banner' he is already amassing his Caltrops.

Facing the Two Betrayers is suicide. In direct battle. Not every dragon in his family was laid low by brute force. Visenya poisoned Aenys to undercut his authority. Alyssa Velaryon poisoned Visenya to spirit her family to freedom. Daeron's own father and grandfather both died under such mysterious circumstances. It is time such treachery be pulled against the bastards, laid low in human form before they can rampage across the realm.

As always, the blacks have a terrible sense of timing. They attack on a night before the plans can be carried out. Daeron's men burn under the pale fires of Prince Laenor's wrathful shade. He knows the dragon to be truly Addam Velaryon, a bastard son.

Spreading his wings, Daeron flies up to meet him. He forces Addam up into the clouds, far above the men raging below. His cousin is his size, his match in speed and agility. He has been a dragon mere months, while Daeron has long flown on his own wings. Their dance is nearly beautiful, but only because Daeron knows the inevitable outcome. Addam is woefully inexperienced, fueled only by adrenaline and foolhardy zeal, and will fall before his claws. It is a heroic death - more so than Helaena's murder, or Daemon dishonorably dragging Aemond down with him.

The dragons, one cobalt and one pale, freeze in their fatal flight when a roar splits the air.

The Hammer's massive bulk manifests in a blazing inferno. He rises in fire and blood, laying everything under him to waste. Blacks, greens, and his own men perish.

A red gash drips blood from behind his scales, the pale viscera of intestines peaking through. Daeron snarls at Ser Jon Roxton's horrible failure.

Addam Velaryon peels away from their fight. He rises and rises, until he falls upon the Hammer like a harpy, streaming fire into his face and clawing for his eyes. The dragons fall into the mud below. Daeron can only stare after them in bewilderment.

His eyes, the same bronze as his horns, sweep over the battle below. It rages in three factions - green and black and turncloak. His men are fighting there, dying in dragonfire or squashed beneath their bulk in failed attempts to slay both, or simply being caught in their rampage.

Addam fights for his own men. It is a losing battle. He is a third of the Hammer's size, without his ferocity and still burdened by a human mind.

Daeron scans the carnage for Ulf's white wings. Perhaps his Caltrops succeeded in one assassination after all. That leaves only two foes.

All he needs to do is wait. The Hammer will finish off Addam soon enough, but not without taking egregious wounds. He'll weaken from blood loss and his own loss of higher thought.

It is what Aemond would have done, or Aegon. Daeron is smaller than them both. Doubtless Rhaenyra or the Bloodwyrm would have done the same, were they still small enough to not rely on brute strength alone.

But he is not his older brothers and especially the usurpers. He is Daeron the Daring, watching like a coward as a bold, honorable knight gives his life in defense of his men. The Hammer is a mutual enemy, a threat to their men and the realm at large. He must be slain at all cost.

Daeron folds his wings and dives, aiming for the Hammer's back. The beast bellows as his talons in. Addam, still savaging the Hammer's neck and chest, does not even seem to notice him.

Daeron cannot gain a strong enough purchase in those thick, slippery scales until the Hammer throws him off. With a snarl, he lunges up again, tenacious as a dog against the bull.

* * *

Lord Benjicot Blackwood is a boy of twelve, already blooded and weary of war. Tumbleton's aftermath does not upset him like it should.

This time most bodies belong to the rebels, perhaps because their forces fractured when some declared for the Two Betrayers. His men claim to count one black body for every ten green. Benjicot bites his tongue on that. So many bodies are burned their colors, let alone their true identities, will never be known. Let his men assume those bodies belong to an enemy. The Queen's forces have badly needed a victory.

The fate of Tumbleton's dragons is far less ambiguous. Poor Ser Addam Velaryon is torn in two. Benjicot's stomach twists at such utter savagery, for dragons are even more vicious with their own kind than the people who must live in their shadows. It is cold comfort Ser Addam at least took down the Hammer with him. The behemoth's body already swarms with flies.

Prince Daeron has hauled himself away from the carnage. He has failed to fly three times. From the way his right wing hangs he will never rise again.

Early after the battle, Benjicot's men have kept their distance. Prince Daeron has snarled at any who came near, spits sparks in warning. That had been when it had seemed like he might still fly away, limp back to his shattered forces to lick his wounds and recover.

Now, as the sun sets, the prince's fire has faded. He's long since given up on flying. After dragging himself by his one good wing, he finally collapses on his side, and does not rise again. Benjicot orders his men a few yards closer. The dragon's head lifts. He stares dazedly at them, before his gaze narrows in focus. He squints at their colors. A tired snarl contorts his features.

"Billy," Benjicot mildly warns his best longbowman. He does not yet give the signal.

Prince Daeron tries and fails to stand. His head lolls back into the mud.

Ser Lyman Grell stares hungrily at the dragon. "We might try to take him alive, my lord."

"And how would we hold him, ser?" he queries mildly.

It is merciful to put a wounded warhorse out of is misery. Benjicot has already done it to a courser that once belonged to his father. Billy Burley can easily put three arrows through the prince's eye and be done with it.

Beneath his scales, Prince Daeron is human as his sister. He had fought as fiercely for his men as Ser Addam had. It is because of them both that the Hammer is dead before his rampage could truly begin, that Ser Addam's sacrifice was not in vain. Benjicot hesitates.

Dull bronze flames envelop Prince Daeron's form. His longbowmen release their shots. Most of their arrows fall short. Their target is not the size he once was.

By the time a few brave souls approach his form, the prince is dead. Perhaps it was the strain of a final transformation. Perhaps it is from the arrow that still found its way into his tattered dragonscale armor.

Ser Lyman Grell. "He could have tried to drag us down with him. Why waste his energy on that?"

His lord glances to the incredulous smallfolk converging around the Hammer's body. "One less trophy for Lady Sharis."

Benjicot Blackwood kneels to close the prince's eyes, to throw his cloak over his broken form. He is still the queen's little brother, still fought against the Hammer as ferociously as Ser Addam had.

So dies Daeron the Daring.

Benjicot Blackwood claims custody of the prince's body. Ser Addam's body is so massive it must be burned. Prince Daeron is small enough to be carried intact to the Silent Sisters. Dragons cremate their dead. There are no true dragons alive in Tumbleton to do the honors.

Both dragons shall be kept safe in Raventree Hall, one in urns and the other as bones. When this damned war is done, Benjicot can offer their remains up for honorable burial by their true families.

Should any be left alive to take them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Understandably there will be no pretenders claiming Daeron's name here. The lack of bronze eyes and scales is pretty hard to explain away.

**Author's Note:**

> Dragons typically come into their second form somewhere between early childhood and adolescence. Triggers vary by individual for reasons no one quite understands. One is either born a dragon or isn't. There's no way to become one later on if it's just not in you. Granted, some dragons might go live entire uneventful lives without ever 'waking.'
> 
> Dragons roughly grow by their human age, which makes Daemon and Rhaenys the biggest dragons of their age. If one does not count the Cannibal, who is ninety years old and lost her humanity a LONG time ago.
> 
> I never understood Borros Baratheon's reasoning in canon. Sure, the greens have Vhagar. The blacks have Meleys, Caraxes, and several other huge dragons wild on the Dragonmont. Aemond makes a good dragon-riding Lord of Storm's End if one doesn't have a son yet (which Borros didn't), but Joffrey Velaryon doesn't have nephews before him in the succession yet, and Luke and Jace's betrothals aren't exactly set in stone. Not that a bit of common sense on Borros' part changes Aemond's bloodlust any.


End file.
